Available from RPGNow.com

Carthians
A Covenant book for Vampire: The Requiem
White Wolf Publishing
224 pages

Predators are competitors. They compete with other types of predators for food; they compete with others for territory. And they compete with others of their own kind for both food and territory as well. Sometimes, predators will form alliances with like-minded individuals to protect a larger area, making survival – even prosperity – more likely for all within the group. So it is with apex predators like vampires; they don’t care much to be around each other, but when faced with threats too big for one to handle, they band together to form protective groups. Those groups of like-minded vampires are called Covenants, and one of the most interesting of those is the Carthians. Based on the premise of greater equality and of emulating the institutions of their prey, Carthians hope to both blend in better – be less obviously a predator among the flock – and keep the stifling, unchanging nature of near-immortality at bay.

Carthians begins with a fine piece of fiction by Greg Stolze to set the mood, then launches into a dissection of the Carthian Movement – its history, goals, and styles of governance. Carthians are no less monstrous in nature than other vampires, but are more inclined to help other Kindred within the movement, fully expecting that, when those others are on their feet and doing well they’ll help their fellow Carthians in return. This is about as selfless an attitude as one can expect from Kindred in the World of Darkness, making them fairly unique.

Because of the Movement’s egalitarian notions, the Carthians are a popular covenant choice for Kindred only a few years into their Requiem. They tend not to have amassed the temporal control of other covenants, or have the monstrous supernatural abilities of ancient creatures found among the Invictus or the Circle of the Crone, but they do have one thing going for them: unity. Say what you will about factional in-fighting – and in any group of Kindred there’s plenty to say – but when the chips are down, Carthians will unite against common enemies more readily than other Kindred. Due to being favored by neonate Kindred, Carthians are frequently more up to date on popular culture – including the latest technology – than their more hidebound rivals. This is a quirk the covenant as a whole encourages for its obvious advantages.

One issue I had with this book is not trivial: I found myself feeling deja vu as I read through the free PDF copy graciously supplied by White Wolf/CCP; the first two chapters seem as though they repeat information somewhat extensively. The words may be slightly different, but it ends up feeling repetitive and dull, and makes for a tough slog as a read. It’s as if they felt the concept of vampires trying to adopt a parlimentarian style of government would be too alien to grasp all at once, repeating the information like zen masters trying to drum a lesson into a dull student. It made for a lackluster reading experience, though it’s likely most interest in this book will be for reference rather than solely as a pleasurable read. Unlike the Invictus covenant book I reviewed several months ago, Carthians failed to hold my interest for long; I fully admit that may originate from my own biases, but again the repetitive nature of the material as presented plays a part.

Another issue is chapter five’s definition of Carthian Law in a domain where Carthians hold praxis. Carthian Law in the instances given is a potent enough force unto itself to literally cancel out the attempted use of Theban Sorcery, Cruac, and other disciplines; this seems to wildly unbalance the game. Naturally, White Wolf repeats in each book the worthy mantra that these are not rules so much as guidelines – interesting suggestions a Storyteller may choose to incorporate if she so wishes. There is nothing forcing anyone to institute such rules regarding the psuedo-magical effects of Carthian Law. Perhaps this choice was seen as a measure to level the playing field against the powerful weapons at the disposal of the other covenants; point taken. Experimentation with rules in an RPG is a given so tossing out ideas is par for the course. Carthian unity is still a powerful weapon at the Movement’s disposal; even an ancient, evil Kindred will think twice about taking on a half-dozen younger Kindred. They may not be a match in terms of sheer power, but getting lucky and putting a stake into the heart of even so mighty a creature is vastly easier with more hands to try.

The Carthian Movement is an intriguing concept within Vampire: the Requiem. While the Carthians covenant book may have flaws, they don’t diminish the intriguing possibilities inherent in such a faction. Carthians does a solid job of informing the reader of the workings of the Carthain Movement, fulfilling its intended function more than adequately.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Invite Only (Vampire) RPG Review
2. The Invictus (Vampire: the Requiem) Review
3. Keep Your Friends Close: An Ongoing Chronicle for Vampire: the Requiem

Available at DriveThruRPG.com

Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners
White Wolf Publishing

The amount of source material produced for the World of Darkness role playing universe is truly impressive. Not all of it is useful to players – much of it being useful primarily to the game master for the purposes of fueling any individual group’s adventures – and some is of benefit to all players. Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners is a book that is fascinating to read for any aficionado of the setting, but is likely best left to the GMs (or “Storytellers” in White Wolf’s World of Darkness parlance) as it spends most of its 160 pages detailing powerful vampires that the players’ characters could bump into in-game.

The personalities detailed here run the gamut of vampire experience. The book leads off with Solomon Birch, a notable in the Chicago area and leader of the local chapter of the Lancea Sanctum – vampires who believe they are God’s instruments, intended to torment humans in order to keep them on the straight and narrow. Birch is powerful and mean, but like most vampires he takes the long view; his plots and schemes take years to fully bear their tainted fruit.

There are many surprises to be found in this book. Some of the creatures within can pass for human; some are truly monstrous, their only real connection to the humanity they left behind ages ago is, perhaps, language and material goods. Their habits, their attitudes, their very thought processes are now so totally alien to humanity as to represent something entirely different. The final example in the book, The Unholy, is a creature out of a vampire’s worst nightmare. Terrifyingly fast even by a vampire’s standards, she is so ancient that mere human blood is no longer sufficient to sustain her – she requires the blood of vampires to keep her moving. She also has a nasty quirk that frightens vampires more than anything else; her regular habit of diablerizing other vampires; that is, draining them of their blood and consuming their very soul as well. She can occasionally be bargained with – as the running flavor text throughout the book artfully demonstrates – but in the end she will have her prey, come hell or high water.

Night Horrors: Immortal Sinners is part of a series of Night Horrors volumes, including Wicked Dead (also for Vampire: The Requiem); Grim Fears for Changeling: The Lost; The Unbidden for Mage: The Awakening and Wolfsbane for Werewolf: The Forsaken. Each is usable with any of the World of Darkness setting books, but the creatures presented within are most highly recommended as encounters for their primary setting by virtue of meshing more easily within that world. At the same time, it could be a dazzling conundrum for vampires to tangle with some ancient Fey creature, or for werewolves to have to come to grips with a coven of mages or an immensely powerful lone sorcerer; the possibilities are many, and hopefully inspiring.

Reading Night Horrors” Immortal Sinners is an intoxicating journey, drawing in the Storyteller and suggesting numerous plot hooks and storylines for years worth of game nights. Its relatively low rating is only because of its limited usefulness – intended for Storytellers rather than all players. Regardless, it’s an excellent read for any fan of vampires and the World of Darkness settings, and is a worthy addition to any bookshelf. Players, check with your Storyteller before reading about these nasties… you wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, would you?

Rating: 3.5 stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Night Horrors: Unbidden Review
2. Night Horrors (Werewolf & Vampire) RPG Review
3. 30 Days of Night Movie Review

Being a fledgling author, I had often pondered what it would be like to participate in a public reading of one’s own work. I recently had the chance to find out. I agreed to assist in the promotion of Haunted: 11 Tales Of Ghostly Horror (FR Press, 2011), particularly since, as a contributor to the anthology, I have a personal stake in how well the book sells. Knowing that readings could help us immensely by generating interest and word-of-mouth advertising, I cast about town looking for likely venues.

It turns out that bookstores are good choices for readings, as one might expect. Also good, and perhaps not as obvious a choice in our Internet-driven culture, are public library branches. Always looking for ways to generate foot traffic, libraries are a great venue for hosting readings. Coffee shops are another venue with potential, though this last is one avenue we haven’t had time to pursue yet.

A word about attendance: Most writers will tell you of the soul-crushing possibility that no one will show up for your reading/autographing. I discovered I had a decent chance of avoiding this unfortunate occurrence with some extra planning and due diligence. Using social networking – Facebook, Twitter and countless other sites – to help promote your event is essential. You’ll be reaching your friends and relatives this way, which is helpful to add a friendly face or two to your audience. Also important: press releases sent to local media. While television and radio stations may seem an unlikely fit for such announcements, occasionally snippets or summaries of those press releases will get read on the air during the obligatory “what’s going on around town?” segments. In that same vein, sending press releases to local newspapers helps spread the word too. It’s important not to rely too heavily on only one medium to get the word out.

Our readings worked out well. Our first event – held at a public library branch on the night of Halloween – drew more than 20 people to hear two local authors read their creepy stories. The second event – at local bookstore A Room Of One’s Own – drew fewer people. Because of a small snafu in the publishing process, we did not have books available to sell at the library reading – definitely a missed opportunity. On the other hand, sales at the bookstore were fairly robust, and nearly everyone in the audience at the store walked away with a copy in hand. My understanding is that not all libraries allow sales on-site; check beforehand to confirm. In our case it was not only kosher but encouraged.

L to R: Georgia Beaverson; Monica Valentinelli; Jason Blair; Alex Bledsoe; Bill Bodden.

In our situation, we have four of the eleven authors who are local to the area, as well as the editor and publisher. Even so, organizing such that everyone’s schedules mesh successfully is no mean feat. We had two of the local authors for the library reading; all four of the locals turned out for the reading at the bookstore. Future readings are likely; with luck we’ll be able to organize a brief road trip or two to spread the word farther.

Working with a micro press for publication often gives the writer a great deal more control over their work, but is not without it’s difficulties. For one thing, getting the book into stores means someone is going to have to do a lot of leg work contacting independent bookstores to make it happen. Forget about Barnes and Noble; without a major publishing house behind the effort, they just aren’t interested in taking any chances. Can you special order a book from them to force them to carry it? Possibly. That doesn’t mean they’ll actually have it on shelves, but if you want to pay them in advance for a small press book, I’m sure even a behemoth like B & N will cheerfully try to order a copy in for you.

Participating in a reading was an enjoyable, though sometimes nerve-wracking experience. I would guide anyone considering reading their own work in public to a post by friend and fellow Haunted contributor Alex Bledsoe with helpful tips on the subject. The advice he’s collected in this post is well worth your time to read, even if you don’t have any wish to read to an audience. But if you do, it can turn an ordinary reading into a memorable and successful one.

No related posts.

Available at DriveThruComics.com

Carl Kolchak, hard-bitten reporter of the supernatural from the TV series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” of the 1970s returns to action courtesy of an ongoing series of comic books and graphic novels from Moonstone Books. This time, Carl’s been fired by the owner of the newspaper that used to employ him, and he must find another way to make ends meet. He’s approached by a young couple, Otto and Mo Brerhahrer, who are ghost hunters in their spare time, and Kolchak can hardly say no, particularly when they offer to buy him lunch.

Through three related vignettes, the reader learns more about Kolchak, and why he has such a close connection to the supernatural. The first, titled “Fifteen Minutes,” find Kolchak at his wits end regarding where his next meal is coming from. He decides to get in touch with a young couple he met at a recent funeral – their interest in the supernatural seemed fortuitous, and at the time they had expressed an interest in hiring him to do some writing work for them. As it turns out, the offer wasn’t completely genuine but it was sincere, and Kolchak is intrigued.

In the second story, “Blood,” Kolchak is attempting to network with other reporters at a press conference to find work. The company holding forth, Windsor Chemical, is being investigated for illegal dumping. Abandoning the networking effort as a lost cause, Kolchak heads home; later that night, a mysterious and beautiful woman visits him, wanting to hire him to investigate the circumstances surrounding Windsor Chemicals. What Kolchak finds is murder, and more deaths to come.

In story number three, “A Clue To The Truth,” Kolchak is sent by Otto Brerhahrer – a ghost hunter from the first tale – to interview a local expert on the supernatural in order to give himself a better background understanding of ghosts. Kolchak finds himself losing track of the time during his lengthy conversation with Doctor Robert M. Carter; he finally excuses himself hours after he arrived, thanking Dr. Carter profusely for being such an engaging conversationalist. When he meets with Otto the next morning, Otto has news that shocks Kolchak to the core.

This is an entertaining series of tales, and I found myself at the end wishing there was more to read and enjoy. Comics are a fantastic medium for this type of story, and the crew presented here – writers Dave Ulanski, Tom DeFalco and C.J. Henderson, Pencilers Dan Dougherty, Ron Frenz and Ron Harris, letters Bill Halliard and Nate Pride and inkers Sal Buscema and Keith Williams – do a great job on this issue. The story “Blood” particularly reminds me of the classic style of the Creepy and Eerie magazines from the 1970s.

Perhaps cheesy and sometimes predictable, Kolchak stories still entertain by virtue of the namesake character, a good-hearted everyman who has an affinity for the strange and peculiar, and while not totally fearless, Kolchak has the guts to do the legwork and actually get to the bottom of the situation. Kolchak Tales: Ghost Stories is a fun read and a great way to spend a dark stormy night.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Related posts:

1. Jason Dark: Ghost Hunter Review
2. World of Darkness: Ghost Stories Review
3. Ghost Stories: Horror Mystery Adventures Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Red Eye of Azathoth, published by Wolfgang Baur and the Open Design LLC, is an unusual adventure for Call of Cthulhu. This campaign pack has the investigators following an evil madman through centuries of effort to summon the Daemon Sultan Azathoth to earth, an event that would cause our planet’s near-total destruction.

In a unique twist, players take on the roles of different characters in each separate scenario – each time battling the same villain, who has possessed a different victim to further his diabolical ends. The pack is presented as being playable either as an extended campaign, or as a series of stand-alone adventures. Red Eye is currently only available in download or print on demand format. You can ask for it at your Favorite Local Game Store (FLGS) but chances are they can’t get it for you.

The premise of REoA is that evil entities seeded a phony, vague prophecy to lure someone into opening a rift in space so that Azathoth may enter Earth. Further, the dread god must be awakened to unleash the full force of it’s mindless fury on the world. A comet, the harbinger of Azathoth’s close proximity to our planet, passes close to the earth every hundred years as a signal that the time is right.

An ancient Chinese sorceror, Lei Peng, discovers this prophecy and, thinking it pertains to him, seeks to perform the necessary rituals. He also discovers alien technology that will allow his spirit to move from the Dreamlands to possess another human from a different time or place in order for him to be in the right location at the right time for each phase of the ritual. The alien technology requires someone to find one of these brass orbs in order for the scholar to possess that person, which means the likelihood of the scholar being present in consecutive arrivals of the comet is pretty slim. Further complicating matters are Denizens of Leng, who want to steal the technology of Lei Peng’s brass orbs so that they may possess humans, allowing the Leng-ites to inhabit other times and places besides the Dreamlands en masse, and to inflict their corrupt and terrible whims on on unsuspecting world. They do not want Azathoth summoned to destroy that which they fought so hard to conquer for themselves, though they do want to help achieve some parts of the ritual.

Red Eye of Azathoth represents a formidable challenge to the players as well as to the Keeper: in each scenario players must adopt the role of a completely different personality. Not only that, it’s conceivable they may not know what their previous selves learned in the past event. Utilizing a new skill, Incarnum, the Keeper assigns points in this skill to each of the Investigators. Players may roll against this skill in an attempt to remember critical pieces of information relating to this threat from past life experiences. The time periods of the various scenarios are 887 AD in Viking-ravaged Britain; 1287 AD in feudal Japan; 1487 AD in Spain during the Inquisition; 1587 AD in the Roanoke Colony in the New World and 1887 AD in the Arizona Territory.

One possible drawback to this group of scenarios has been the relative lack of success for Call of Cthulhu scenarios set in times other than the 1920s/1930s. However, the style of this adventure pack would lend itself perfectly to convention play. Conventions could easily host an ongoing tournament using the Red Eye Of Azathoth, with players on a literal timetable to complete each scenario in succession  over the weekend.

This is an interesting concept for a Call of Cthulhu adventure. The players are required to do actual role-playing as opposed to going in guns blazing; most of the settings pre-date reasonably accurate gunpowder weapons anyway, so they’ll have to rely primarily on their wits to solve the problem. Each adventure represents a significant challenge in its own right; stringing them all together requires the Keeper to keep track of the previous adventures, as the results from the past scenario has a very concrete affect on events in the current chapter.

Red Eye of Azathoth is unlikely to appeal to every fan of Call of Cthulhu and the Lovecraft Mythos. However, it is a lovingly-crafted series of adventures that will present an interesting challenge to players with a good attitude and a reasonably high curiosity level. It is a challenging series of adventure to be sure, but well worth the effort to stave off the forces of trans-dimensional evil.

Rating: 3.5 out of Five stars

Related posts:

1. Age of Cthulhu: Shadows of Leningrad Review

Available at Amazon.com

The Grave Doug Freshley
Archaia Entertainment LLC
Written by Josh Hechinger
Illustrated by mp Mann

There aren’t many tales where the undead are the good guys; say what you want about Twilight or True Blood, but those aren’t in the same league as an undead schoolteacher seeking vengeance for the dead family of his pupil.
Thus we have The Grave Doug Freshley, about a tutor – Doug Freshley – in the Wild West who witnesses the death of his friend and his friend’s wife, and manages to save their son – his student – from the family farmhouse as it goes up in flames. The crime has been perpetrated by the Delancey family – a band of thugs, each one worse than the last.

The Delanceys are trying to expand their stake the easy way – by stealing from the locals and killing them so there’s no one to dispute the claim. While holding the dying body of his friend and employer,Shane McNally, Doug swears to protect Shane’s family. Shane’s wife is already dead, and in trying to save their son Bat, Doug is shot to death by one of the Delanceys. Doug swore an oath, and some things are more important than life and death, apparently; he rises up, finds Bat inside the burning farmhouse, and carries him to safety. They then begin to hunt down the Delanceys with vengeance on their minds.

Borrowing heavily from stories like Lone Wolf and Cub, this western-fantasy-horror mash-up follows Doug and Bat as they seek out the Delanceys. On the way, Doug encounters someone he should have expected all along; Death himself, come to claim what’s rightfully his – Doug Freshley.

This is an enjoyable, quick read, and Archaia Entertainment graciously provided me with a free ebook version. The art style is spare and simple, and the  tale itself shares those qualities. The dialogue is sufficient for the story though not snappy or clever. There is one small surprise in the main story that I won’t reveal; clever readers will likely pick it out long before I did, but that’s part of the fun. The story emphasizes the cowboy elements while downplaying the undead nature of the protagonist; most people seem a bit surprised that Doug can be riddled with bullets and walk away, but they aren’t freaked out by it, which aids the story but is at times a bit jarring. Fans of the Western genre will likely find much to like about this story; Horror aficionados may find this title leaving a bit to be desired.

Rating: 3 out of five stars

Review by Bill Bodden

No related posts.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles Miniatures, paint job and crappy photography both courtesy of the author.

Among other things, I’m a gamer. One of my favorite aspects of gaming is painting miniatures. Whether it be an army of Dwarves or Goblins for Warhammer Fantasy Battles, or the Austrian 18th Regiment of infantry from the 1809 Campaign against Napoleon, painting miniatures is sub-culture of gaming I particularly enjoy.

People – non gamers especially – often marvel at how tiny the miniatures are (some no bigger than a dime) and express amazement that I can paint such a small thing so precisely. The truth is, there are numerous tricks to painting miniatures that help make even paint jobs done by a shaky hand like mine look splendid. To be fair, I can think of a dozen people off the top of my head who are vastly better miniatures painters than I. Having figures on the table that you’ve painted yourself can give one a sense of accomplishment and be a source of pride regardless of one’s relative level of skill. The process of painting is very zen-like; I find it calming and peaceful. Generally, slow and steady is the best method for me to achieve desirable results. It forces me to be patient, which is a quality I lack all too often. Sometimes I slip, and have to paint over a spot and start again – another thing that enforces calm and caution.

My back won’t allow me to paint for more than an hour at a time, and my schedule won’t permit me time to paint more often than three or four times a month. As a consequence I am slow at finishing any serious quantity of miniatures for a game, which frustrates my gaming buddies a fair bit – and reasonably so. Still, the pride I feel when lining up my finished, painted army on the gaming table is delightful.

Curiously, painting miniatures is a solitary hobby that leads to a more gregarious one – gaming. In this I find satisfaction as well; I am by nature reserved and introspective, yet the company of my peers is desirable at times too. With this type of pursuit I can enjoy both aspects of my social life as the two elements of miniatures gaming dovetail together nicely.

Miniatures by Old Glory (left, center) and Battle Honors (right); paint job and crapy photography by the author

Sweethearts of my past had expressed some concern at the time over me keeping up such a “childish hobby;” they didn’t understand that this is not only painting toy soldiers, it’s a creative act. I turn a molded lump of metal into a spearman of the Empire, bright scarlet and yellow livery blazing in the sun, helmet and shield shining, ready to conquer the enemies of the Emperor or die trying. Is what I do any worse than constantly shopping for that perfect, 30th pair of shoes, or being glued to the television on game day? Age is forcing me to make adaptations – my eyesight requires that I take off my glasses to see better close-up, and there’s the aforementioned back issue – but it’s still one of the most enjoyable hobbies I’ve tried, and my wife has no qualms at all about it.

In this pastime I find common ground with famed author and noted pacifist H.G. Wells, who is believed to have devised the first recorded rules for “floor” battles using toy soldiers. He hoped that such pastimes would help curb the human animal’s more warlike tendencies, by extension creating a better world. I can only speculate whether or not he was correct in his hope, but I cannot question the validity of his motive. The fact that I and my gaming brethren find ourselves in such august company as the author of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine wouldn’t make me more of less interested in miniatures. The enjoyment I take from it is reason enough for me to continue with this hobby that provides me a nearly endless source of pleasure and keeps me off the streets.

– Bill Bodden

No related posts.

Available now at RPGNow.com

City of the Damned: New Orleans
A Sourcebook for Vampire: The Requiem
White Wolf Publishing, 146 pages
Authors: Ari Marmel and C. A. Suleiman

Setting books are a tough sell in most role playing games. For one thing, if the game master opts to set the adventures of the characters in a different city then those offered – or the players’ characters find themselves drawn in another direction entirely – setting books become less than completely useful. Also, since they will only sell – for the most part – to game masters, more than three-quarters of the potential audience is already uninterested in purchasing it.

Such is the problem with city guides for the World of Darkness; despite aiming for fascinating cities with a great many points of interest besides vampires, werewolves and the like, they just haven’t sold well enough to justify others in the line. However, they are well worth a GM’s time and cash outlay to obtain; besides a wealth of interesting NPCs that might show up in one’s own game, the city books are filled with fantastic plot hooks and useful information that is easily adapted to any chronicler’s setting.

The City of the Damned: New Orleans book has another problem, one that is unique to the Crescent City and the Gulf Coast: Hurricane Katrina. On sale mere weeks before Katrina devastated New Orleans, a good many bits of local color and specific geographical information in CotD:NO are now woefully obsolete. To be fair, this is likely to only be a real issue to people who reside in or know and love the city well. Besides the horrific death and destruction toll it took on real-life residents of the city, White Wolf had to be cursing their timing that something as seemingly safe as a reference guide to a fictional version of a major US city becomes partially obsolete literally overnight.

New Orleans, as reckoned in the World of Darkness, is a city under the sway of an ancient, Lancaea Sanctum Prince named Augusto Vidal. Because of this, the city is bursting with tensions – political, spiritual and economic. Vidal rules the city with an iron hand, and tolerates the presence of the Circle of the Crone – the covenant supported by one of his major rivals for power, the Nosferatu elder Baron Cimitiere – but only barely.

The city is also largely carved up into territories already; newcomers may have trouble feeding without stepping on the toes of others. This is precisely the way Prince Vidal wants it: the local Kindred are (mostly) beholden to him for their very existence. It helps him maintain control over the Big Easy – control that has lasted for more than 200 years. The information in this book expands on the data provided in the final chapter of the Vampire: the Requiem core book, adding many new minor characters, a handful of locations, and more background information plus a short, original adventure to introduce the new kids in town to New Orleans.

If I have any complaints about this book – and they would be minor ones to be sure – it’s that the book seems a bit scattered; organization appears to be an afterthought here. It’s challenging to find the stats for the power players in the city, and it shouldn’t be so. This is not a new concept utilized for this book alone; it has been applied to a number of the WoD books I’ve purchased, and I find it mildly annoying. Rather than have a chapter where all characters’ stat blocs are collected, they are placed in scattered clumps. Sometimes there seems to be a reason to this dispersal – putting all of one particular faction together, for example – but usually the groupings are less tightly organized.

Also, I wish White Wolf had taken the same road with this book as they did with the World of Darkness: Chicago tome. There are clearly far more forces at work in the Big Easy than just vampires, but other types of supernatural creatures rate only a passing mention in sidebars. Keeping in mind what I mentioned earlier – that these guidebooks tend to appeal to fewer players by virtue of being primarily intended for GMs – it seems natural to make them as easy as possible to integrate into any type of WoD campaign, whether Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, or something else.

All that aside, City of the Damned: New Orleans is exactly what a guide to a specific setting should be; intriguing, full of mystery and potential, and offering intoxicating glimpses of another place. At an MSRP of $26.99 for a print copy (less for a PDF download), CotD:NO is well worth the money for the setting material alone.

Three out of Five Stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. The Lost City RPG Review
2. City of the Damned: New Orleans Review
3. City of Ashes Fiction Review

Another GenCon has come and gone – my eleventh straight as an industry professional – and I wanted to reflect a bit on why GenCon is important for the gaming industry – not to mention just a great time as an attendee/gamer. For one thing, nearly all the major tabletop game companies – and most of the minor ones – have a presence at GenCon. If your favorite local Game Store (FLGS) doesn’t carry something from one of these companies, odds are better than average it can be found in the dealers’ hall.

Gaming at GenCon? Yes, there’s lots. Most of it involves paying something extra to play, which is a bit of a downer, but still affordable. If you plan to go, registering for events early is a good idea; they fill up quickly and there’s no guarantee of a last-minute opening in the game you really wanted to try. Many manufacturers run demos at their booths in the dealer’s hall; these will be short, use pre-gen characters they provide, but are an excellent way to sample something new before buying.

My day job involves managing sales for Green Ronin Publishing. I spend the vast majority of my dealer’s hall hours in the Green Ronin booth. I get out on my lunch breaks to walk the floor, but I don’t get to spend as much time perusing as I’d like. One thing I found and fell in love with was this set of Cthulhu cufflinks and matching tie bar from Dagon Industries. They are silver with a handsomely enameled black background to make the image pop. These were my favorite items from the show. I missed out on buying some Horror Clicks bricks at one booth; they were sold out when I went back. Perhaps it was fate telling me I’d spent enough money already.

But it wasn’t all gaming; on Wednesday night I stopped by the traditional, super-secret location of the Diana Jones Awards party, and was happy to hear that Jason Morningstar won this year for his fascinating RPG Fiasco. Thursday I went to an Indianapolis Indians game with Jim Lowder. Afterwards, we stopped by a gathering in honor of former Green Ronin writer/developer and current Wizards of the Coast author Rob Schwalb’s birthday. I’m not a night owl, nor am I an accomplished drinker; I turned in before 1 am that night, as usual.

I also tracked down a couple of books I’d been searching for. Cossack Girl, about Marina Yurlova, who joined the Cossacks in the Russian army at the start of World War 1. She never pretended to be anything other than female, and served for six years despite prevailing sentiments at the time being against women serving as active duty soldiers.

I also found a copy of The Zombie Feed, Vol. 1 by Apex Publishing including a story by Flames Rising’s own faithful reviewer and correspondent, Monica Valentinelli.

It’s a long drive there and back and it’s good to be home, but for me GenCon is always worth the trip. Good food to be had in Indianapolis, fun things to do, seeing old friends again and being around so much gaming are among the many things that make GenCon worth the trip for me every year.

Related posts:

1. Back from GenCon 2011
2. Bill’s Month in Horror, March 2011
3. Got a Horror Fan to Buy For? Steve Recommends…

Available from Amazon.com

Chilling Tales: Evil Did I Dwell; Lewd Did I Live
Edited by Michael Kelly
218 pages
Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing

Horror is a subjective state; what one finds horrifying another might find merely gruesome or grotesque. It is within this ambiguity I find myself regarding Chilling Tales: Evil DId I Dwell; Lewd Did I Live. There was horror within to be sure; also within was loneliness, isolation, despair, and a lot of really good writing.

The 18 “Spine tingling Tales” contained in this volume represent work of some of Canada’s brightest writers. This is pointed out carefully in the editor’s introduction as a rarity, and while I had heard of several authors in the contents page, I was largely unfamiliar with all of them. In that respect I am grateful to Mr. Kelly for assembling this slate of authors into whose work I now wish to delve further. Mr. Kelly goes on to mention two other all-Canadian anthologies, including Tesseracts Thirteen, edited by David Morrell and Nancy Kilpatrick, and Evolve, a collection of vampire tales edited by Nancy Kilpatrick. Both volumes are also published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Standout stories for me in this collection included “Tom Chesnutt’s Midnight Blues” by Robert J. Wiersema and “404″ by Barbara Roden. Both are among the first three tales and get the anthology off to a great start. “Tom Chesnutt’s” is about a philandering folk singer who inadvertently causes his wife’s death. She haunts him now, not actively rattling chains and moaning but rather showing up at his gigs – a phantom only he can see – as a reminder of his misdeeds. “404″ is a distressingly familiar tale about office workers who discover their comrades simply disappear one day. As their numbers dwindle and their isolation increases, they each find themselves coming under the watchful eye of their supervisor.

“King Him” by Richard Gavin is told almost in a fairy-tale manner, about a brother and sister living alone in a small community. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that sanity is a fragile creature, and there are things than can enter this world that can cause sanity to crumble, bit by bit. Leah Bobet’s “Stay” emphasizes the isolation or northern Canadian winter, as a produce truck goes off the road near the tiny town of Sunrise. Since the produce will spoil before a replacement truck can get through to take it away, the townsfolk hold a feast, finding the fresh, exotic fruits and vegetables most welcome. The truck’s driver proves to be more than he appears – or perhaps less – and the townspeople must decide what to do about him.

“The Deafening Sound of Slumber” is Simon Strantzas’ busy tale of a man overly sensitive to noise who’s best option is working nights in a sleep research facility. This was a chilling tale indeed with a clever, intriguing concept, but I felt its effectiveness somewhat lost by the distracting foibles of the narrator. It could easily have been every bit as good by minimizing or leaving those bits of character development completely out of the story altogether; I found the man more aggravating than anything and it broke my sympathy for the character. Ultimately I was relieved at his demise, which I’m not certain was the author’s intent.

Likewise in Nancy Kilpatrick’s “Sympathy for the Devil” I found it difficult to sympathize – or even identify with – the main character because he’s such a turd of a man. In the end, he has a change of heart and feels contrition over what he’s done, but it doesn’t save him. His epiphany feels too forced, too (literally) last-minute to work, and his end is a fitting one. In “My Body” by Ian Rogers on the other hand, I found the mystery of the story intriguing, and was in the dark about the reveal until nearly the end.

I found myself perplexed at the inclusion of a number of these stories, particularly Suzanne Church’s “The Needle’s Eye”. While an excellent story, there is nothing particularly horrifying about it, unless one has a phobia about eye injuries. It is a bittersweet tale about medical personnel fighting against a new, lethal plague in Africa, and frankly I found the ending happy and hopeful despite the disability the protagonist has to contend with for the rest of his life – which seems to me the antithesis of the anthology’s theme. Still, it’s difficult to find too much fault with “The Needle’s Eye” itself; it is a great story well told.

The sense of isolation and despair is a strong, unifying undercurrent in this book, and that state of mind can be horrifying of itself, but mostly these stories convey the heavy oppression of loneliness and isolation. They were very effective stories – well-written, pacing and character development were good – but I found it difficult to call them all horror, or even dark fantasy, though some were closer than others. Being clearly labelled as a “Horror and Dark Fantasy Anthology” (it even says so on the back cover) I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit cheated, though in truth, the term “Dark Fantasy” is a pretty broad and vaguely-defined category. Certainly nearly all were enjoyable stories and I found them entertaining at the very least, but not chilling or spine tingling as billed. Possibly this is a case of personal taste; I urge you to read the anthology for yourself and decide whether or not I’m right. The high level of quality of the tales in this collection is well worth the effort in any case.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. The Best Of All Flesh Anthology Review
2. Pathfinder Tales: Prince of Wolves Review
3. Grimm Fairy Tales Graphic Novel Review

Available at DriveThruComics.com

Kolchak: The Night Stalker – the Lovecraftian Horror
Story by C.J. Henderson
Illustrated by Jaime Caldreon
Moonstone Books, 96 pages

The 1974 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker never got rave reviews from critics. Only twenty episodes of the show exist, plus two TV movie/pilot episodes: The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). The special effects, even by the standards of the day, were cheesy and unremarkable, though the stories themselves were interesting and provided a wide variety of paranormal beasties from folklore the world over instead of rehashing zombies or vampires week after week. Unfortunately, the TV movies proved vastly more popular than the TV series they generated.

Still, Kolchak was highly influential in the horror scene, even to this day. Chris Carter, creator of the X-Files, lists The Night Stalker series as being a primary inspiration for his acclaimed series about FBI agents investigating supernatural phenomena. In fact, he went so far as to cast the star of Kolchak, Darren McGavin, in two homage-laced episodes as retired FBI agent Arthur Dales, who was the first agent assigned to what would become the Bureau’s X-Files department. So notable was this declaration by Carter that a reboot of the Night Stalker series was launched in 2005, to fairly dismal response and rapid cancellation.

It should come as no surprise that a graphic novel treatment of Kolchak might spring into being as well, and at that before the reboot of the series. Enter Moonstone Books with their long-running Kolchak series, and lo, Kolchak has been brought back from the dead, like many of the creepy entities he faced as a reporter with a nose for the paranormal.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker – The Lovecraftian Horror, finds Kolchak assigned to cover a case first reported on by another news service. Carl Kolchak’s Editor, Tony Vincenzo, is livid that they have to follow a competitor’s lead, and orders Kolchak to get the scoop: A strange, half-fish, half-man creature has washed up on the beach in northern California. This in itself is remarkable, but Kolchak has no idea exactly what is in store for him, or how close he will come to facing something more mind-shattering than in any of his previous cases. Fusing Kolchak with Lovecraft seems like a natural leap, and the artists carry off this mash-up superbly.

The story in this graphic novel – unlike most – is told mostly in text format, with a single, large illustration occupying the center of each page and text blocks at the top and bottom. It’s a style that works well for this genre; horror is always most effective when the imagination is given a great deal of room to maneuver on it’s own. Each illustration is lovingly detailed, and my hat’s off to Jaime Calderon for his impressive illustrative work on this book, especially for his faithful renderings of Darren McGavin and SImon Oakland, the actors who portrayed Carl Kolchak and Tony Vincenzo, respectively.

The story itself is solid, and C.J. Henderson adds more than a few typical Lovecraft memes to keep the reader in the right frame of mind. The mood of this piece is dark and mysterious – as it should be – but there’s a twist to the story that I found delightfully unexpected. As usual, things are not all what they appear to be, but not in the way one might anticipate with a Lovecraft-inspired tale.

I liked this story; the more I’ve thought about it, the more it grew on me, until finally I reread it and discovered layers of nuance I’d missed the first time through.

Kolchak’s style isn’t everyone’s cup of protoplasm; he is abrasive, manipulative and suspicious – useful qualities in a reporter – but in this tale the hard-bitten snoop meets his match in terms of the situation’s gravity; because of the circumstances Kolchak finds himself willingly making deals he never thought possible, and it helps portray the character as more sympathetic, more human.

I enjoyed Kolchak: The Night Stalker – The Lovecraftian Horror a great deal. Afficianados of both Lovecraft and of Kolchak will find much to appreciate in this book; casual horror fans will too.

Four out of Five stars.

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Two Lovecraftian Kickstarter Projects
2. Blokes Tomb of Horror 2 Review
3. Critter Cache: Lovecraftian Bestiary Review

Available from Amazon.com

Zombie Dice
Steve Jackson Games
Designed by Steve Jackson
MSRP: $13.13

Steve Jackson has dominated the games industry lately with a seemingly endless supply of Munchkin-related games, accessories and knick-knacks. Just to prove there’s more going on at Jackson Labs than Munchkin, Steve Jackson Games released Zombie Dice last year to great acclaim. That acclaim is well-earned: Zombie Dice is fast, fun and addictive, and it’s cheap to boot.

Zombie Dice includes 13 dice, instructions, and a dice shaker/storage container in the package. The instructions are very simple: you (as the zombie) roll three dice at a time, and pick them out of the cup without looking at them. If a brain logo comes up, hooray! – you’ve successfully eaten some brains; set those aside. If the explosion logo is showing, too bad – the intended victim had a shotgun, and fought back; set those to the other side. Get three of those shotgun blasts in one turn and you lose any accumulated brains and your turn ends. Also marked on the dice are footprints, indicating your victim escaped. If you decide to keep rolling, you will re-roll any feet dice, plus enough new ones to add up to three. If at any point during your roll you wish to stop, you “bank” those points and begin from that score next turn. Once you “bank” points, they are safe.

There are three colors of dice, indicating how zombie-friendly they are: the six green dice each have three brains, one shotgun blast and two feet. Four yellow dice each show two blasts, two brains and two feet. The three red dice have three blasts, two feet and only one brain. This is important to know when you’re deciding whether or not to push your zombie luck. If red dice are left in your hand, the odds of a blast coming up are pretty good; you may want to rethink that next roll.

Seven of us played three games of Zombie Dice while eating and watching a baseball game at the local ballpark. There aren’t many games that can lay claim to being such a laid-back – yet still competitive – endeavor, but Zombie Dice certainly can. Not only that, it travels well and can be explained to even a non-gamer in under two minutes. There really aren’t any downsides to Zombie Dice – get out there and buy a copy! I guarantee you’ll have fun.

Five out of Five Stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Sneak Peek at Zombie Chibithulhu, Munchkin Axe Cop, Munchkin Conan and more!
2. SJGames Week: Interview with Munchkin Illustrator John Kovalic
3. SJGames Week: Awful Green Things From Outer Space Review

James Lowder has been active as a writer and editor sine the 1980s, most famous perhaps for authoring the novel Knight of the Black Rose for TSR, and for editing the All Flesh Must Be Eaten fiction anthologies Book of All Flesh, Book of More Flesh and Book of Final Flesh. More recently, he edited the essay collection Family Games: The 100 Best, and fiction anthologies Curse of the Full Moon and The Best of All Flesh.

I chatted recently with Jim via email about some of his most recently completed projects: Triumph of The Walking Dead – a collection of essays on the longrunning comics series and AMC network’s successful TV series – and Silent Knife and Strangeness in the Proportion, two novels from White Wolf publishing currently being serialized on the White Wolf web site and awaiting print publication.

How did you get involved with the anthology Triumph of The Walking Dead?

I contributed essays to two earlier books in BenBella’s Smart Pop line, King Kong is Back! and The Unauthorized X-Men, and we’ve discussed several projects over the past few during. Smart Pop editor-in-chief Leah Wilson and I trade emails from time to time, and during the course of one of these email chats I suggested The Walking Dead as a potential subject for an essay collection.

This was right around the time the AMC series launched. I was thinking I’d be a contributor to the book if it went forward, but BenBella decided that my work with zombie-related fiction, film, and comics made me a good candidate to edit it. The approach and tone of the Smart Pop line—commentary with some intellectual heft to it, but written in a lively, accessible style—is ideal for this topic. I never tire of the subject of zombies and my experiences working with BenBella have been uniformly positive, so taking on the project was an easy decision.

Are there any authors you wanted to have involved in ToTWD that just couldn’t work it into their schedule?

It would have been great if I could have wrangled a piece from Robert Kirkman himself, or from Charlie Adlard or Tony Moore—the people behind the comics. I tried to line those up, but they never came together. That’s not a surprise. They’re all quite busy after the incredible success of The Walking Dead in its various incarnations.

Otherwise, my initial list of potential authors was longer than the final table of contents could be. Not everyone I contacted was able to participate, but I am very pleased with the final line-up. The essayists are all critics and creators who have written about zombies in one form or another. In addition, most are writers I’d not edited before. That was another reason I jumped at the chance to shepherd the book; I knew I was going to get the opportunity to work for the first time with a lot of people whose work I admire.

Given your extensive resume with previous zombie anthologies, what makes this one different?

Zombies do indeed shamble through a lot of the things I’ve published. Many of my experiences with zombie-related projects have been with fiction, though, whether editing The Book of All Flesh or writing the living dead into my own novels and stories. Because Triumph of The Walking Dead is non-fiction, with a relatively tight thematic focus, it presented a different set of editorial challenges from the ones I faced editing the Books of Flesh anthologies. The essayists reach very different conclusions about the morality of Rick Grimes’ actions as leader, for example. If this were a collection of short stories, I could let each tale stand as a distinct, unconnected vision.

But the essays in this book are all talking about the same source material, so as editor I needed to make certain the different perspectives work together as parts of a larger dialogue, rather than as isolated, conflicting fragments. I also wanted to give readers a lot of different angles on The Walking Dead, from pieces discussing the material in the context of comic book history or the history of violence on television, to detailed explorations of specific characters and themes. This required more targeted editorial direction. For the reader, I hope this effort results in an anthology that will be surprising and thought-provoking.

Zombies were all the rage for a while, but seemed to be falling out of vogue recently; has the AMC television series The Walking Dead revitalized the zombie genre in pop culture?

The media magnates who chase fads jumped on the living dead bandwagon for a while. Now they’re off breathlessly pursuing some other hot pop-culture trend. I don’t know that the AMC television series will revitalize the zombie craze, and in a way I hope it doesn’t. So much material was pumped out during the “Zombie Renaissance” that kicked off in 2003 or so that it has sometimes been difficult for inventive, passion-driven work to find an audience. After the shelves get crowded enough, it’s too easy to dismiss it all as just more market-driven product with brain-munching dead things in it.

The Walking Dead has continued to thrive even after the zombie fad cooled because it is top-notch storytelling, both the comic and the AMC series. The fact that so many serious creators and critics had thoughtful things to say about it in Triumph of The Walking Dead is a testament to its weight. I like to think that this sort of quality work will continue to draw readers and viewers. For me, I was publishing books and stories featuring the living dead before the Zombie Renaissance and I’ll continue to do so, fad or no fad.

Silent Knife and Strangeness in the Proportion have been in the works for a while, and are currently serialized on the White Wolf website. When will those be available as print editions?

It has been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been working on the two books as editor since 2007. Both were the result of a contest White Wolf ran for World of Darkness novels. After they selected the winning entries, Stewart Wieck and Rich Thomas brought me on board to help the two first-time novelists whip their books into shape. Initially, the plan was to publish the books in traditional print form in 2008, but changes in the book market led us to look at different approaches and the release dates shifted and then shifted again. Ultimately we settled on serializing the novels weekly on the White Wolf website. All of Strangeness in the Proportion has been posted and we’re partway through Silent Knife. Both will eventually be collected as ebooks and should also be released in print, though we’re still finalizing plans.

The changes in the publication plans for the novels have actually turned out to be an incredible boon. Joshua Doestch, the author of Strangeness in the Proportion, and David Nurenberg, the author of Silent Knife, have had the opportunity to rework the manuscripts and really make them shine. Rich Thomas and Eddy Webb at White Wolf deserve a lot of credit for turning what should have been a disappointment—no author likes to hear that his or her first book is going to be delayed in its release for a couple years—into an opportunity for the authors to hone their craft.

How did you like working in the World of Darkness?

The World of Darkness is terrific. The creative people who first imagined the world and all the talented designers and writers and artists who have added to the setting over the years have produced what has to be described as the premiere shared horror setting. What makes the World of Darkness a great place for writers and editors, though, is the way in which the White Wolf staff supports and respects their creativity.

I’ve had the pleasure of both editing World of Darkness material, with Strangeness in the Proportion and Silent Knife, and writing in the setting, with game material in Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom and short stories in the anthologies Truth Until Paradox, City of Darkness: Unseen, and The Splendour Falls. All those projects have been studies in the way shared-world publishing should work.

Having done a great deal of both, do you have a preference for being a writer or an editor?

I find editing easier. It’s not the painful process writing seems to be for me most of the time. But I enjoy writing more; it’s more fulfilling creatively. I hope to fit some new writing projects into my schedule in the next few months. I’m currently wrapping up two short stories and two comic book scripts, all of which should see print by the end of the year. It’s actually been a while since I published any fiction, so I’m looking forward to getting those stories in front of readers.

Interview by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Jeremy Jones talks to James Lowder about “Worlds of Their Own”
2. Cover Art Preview of The Screaming Tower by James Lowder
3. James Lowder’s The Screaming Tower

Available at Amazon.com

Van Helsing Board Game
Mayfair Games
Designer: Frederic Moyersoen
for 2-5 players, ages 10 and up
45-60 minutes playing time

Let’s be honest; who doesn’t love Count Dracula? The cape, the sex appeal, the slick hair, eschewing modern dentistry – he did it all, including upsetting more than a few well-to-do British noblemen. In Van Helsing, one player gets to play the toothy Count, while the remaining one to four players take on the roles of Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, Lord Godalming and Abraham Van Helsing – the Hunters.

The board is a loose grid of spaces showing three levels of Dracula’s castle. Hunters move around the board looking for Dracula and his brides. The object of the game for them is to destroy five of the eight brides, or destroy Dracula himself if they like doing things the hard way. For the Count, his goal is to either transform all four of the Hunters into his minions or kill them, or to get four of his potential brides to the coffin space in his castle.

As the game begins, the Hunters are woefully weak, and must find weapons and other items along the way. Luckily, the Count was never one to soil his hands with housekeeping, so there’s plenty of things – from crosses and holy water to rifles and first aid kits – lying around waiting to be picked up. If the Hunters are lucky, they will stumble across one or two brides in the random assortment of tiles and take them out before the Count can find them. Even though the Brides are relatively weak, they can be dangerous when assisting Dracula’s attacks. Dracula – and anyone with him – may move invisibly. That is, the player announces that Dracula is moving, then takes the Count’s marker off the board, keeping track of the ending space on a secret movement sheet provided. The Dracula player must reveal the Count’s starting location at the beginning of his turn, and if any Hunter is unlucky enough to stumble into a room with Dracula, he is revealed then as well.

The rules are brief, and English, French, Dutch and German translations are included. The translation to English is not the best; mostly these are simple word-choice mistakes that don’t detract from understanding the game. It is important to note, however, that the rules governing the use of items are covered in the Description of Objects section a the end. This is an crucial step in knowing what the objects that one starts with can do, including Dracula’s pet bats.

If Dracula is successful in turning any of the Hunters into vampires themselves, they then must work together to insure the downfall of the remaining Hunters. While it is possible for Dracula and his minions to simply kill the Hunters, it’s obviously more useful early in the game if one or more have been made into vampires. To do this, the vampire must use biting to attack the Hunter’s last remaining Blood Point. If successful, the Hunter becomes a minion. If not, the Vampire loses a Blood Point himself. In the case of Brides – who only have one Blood Point – or if Dracula or a Hunter-turned-Minion is down to they last Blood Point and fail an attack – this destroys them.

The only thing about Van Helsing that made me uncofortable is the hidden movement of Dracula. Hidden movement is, in my opinion, too vulnerable to accidental or intentional abuse, and this situation can often bring a game to a screeching halt. A word to the wise should be sufficient: Dracula players, be scrupulously careful counting spaces when using hidden movement.

Strategically, the Characters need to stick together for protection while they gather up a couple of useful items apiece. They have to destroy five brides as one way to win, so flipping over as many item tokens as they can is a sensible strategy. The Count needs to collect his brides as quickly as possible by turning over the same item tokens the Hunters are searching through. The down side to this for the Dracula player is, of course, revealing where potentially useful items are in the castle. That also allows the Count to use those tantalizing items to lure or trap one or more Hunters. The Count would also be advised to take out one of the Hunters immediately, before they can arm themselves adequately, but this will depend largely on luck – whether they move close enough to Dracula’s starting point for him to reach them in one turn, basically. If the Characters get lucky on their initial item draw, they could begin the game well-armed, so the Dracula player should be cautious of making frontal assaults.

Van Helsing is a fun romp through gothic horror, and the fast pace of play keeps things moving along nicely. Veteran gamers may recognize some similarity to the game Scotland Yard, and this observation wouldn’t be far off. At an MSRP of $49.00, the price for Van Helsing is in line with similar board games. The components are solid and colorful, and the included plastic tray keeps everything organized and well-protected. If you’re a fan of the vampire/gothic horror genre, Van Helsing is well worth your time to check out.

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design Review
2. Martians Board Game Review
3. A Touch of Evil Board Game Review

Available from Dark Regions Press

The Gaki and Other Hungry Spirits
A short story collection by Stephen Mark Rainey
Dark Regions Press
170 pages

Being an aficionado of folklore, I was intrigued by the title of this collection, The Gaki and Other Hungry Spirits, which refers to “hungry ghosts” of Japanese legend. While the stories themselves are decidedly Western in nature, they are no less interesting. A number of the tales do feature hungry spirits, so points to Mr. Rainey for holding to his theme.

This collection starts off with the title story, “The Gaki” in which we have a tale of a man searching for something to fill his life. He finds intrigue at a clandestine gathering of people by the Copper River, and what follows will lead him down a path he never knew existed. Ultimately, he finds what he seeks, but it isn’t what he expected, and it requires a high level of devotion from him in exchange.

On first hearing the title of this book, I immediately looked it up. I was surprised to find it only available in hardcover at that time, and in premium hardcover – signed, numbered editions – at that. The price tag of $40 for the signed hardcover put me off a bit, so I wrote an email to ask when the trade paperback would be available. The publisher responded quickly, noting the trade paperback was still some months away, and cleverly offered me a discount coupon which I then used to purchase Gaki and two other intriguing horror titles as well.

“Terror From the Middle Island,” written by Mr. Rainey with Durant Haire, tells the story of a Christian preacher attempting to bring his faith to the new frontier of the fledgling United States. He finds a challenge greater than he could have expected in a vengeful spirit, and the choice he makes will affect the area for generations to come. This was one of my favorite stories in the collection, dealing with themes of choice, consequences and American history.

It’s rare to find a short-story collection where the reader will like every story presented. While that was the case with me reading this book, I only found two of the 17 stories I didn’t care for – and six that I liked quite a bit – a commendable achievement.

“Abroyel” reads like a hard-boiled detective story, and adds magic and extra-dimensional creatures to form a fine, tasty broth. Possibly more fantasy than true horror, it was a captivating tale regardless, and one of my favorites from this collection. The ending is tantalizing, and frankly I’d love to see Mr. Rainey develop this into a novel; with the current popularity of urban fantasy I think it could do quite well.

These tales are an interesting mix; most are traditional short stories, a few verge on being flash fiction, and at least one is clearly meant to be part of a novel. They hold together as a group fairly well, and the variety of formats adds a bit of spice to keep the reader from getting bogged down.

“Demon Jar” and “Field Dressing” are both wicked tales with surprising endings; to say much more would give it away, but I enjoyed them both a great deal. Both are short – “Demon “Jar” is only seven pages in length – “Field Dressing” only two.

Available now in trade paperback format as well as hardcover, I highly recommend The Gaki and Other Hungry Spirits for even the casual fan of horror. The mix of styles and themes is refreshing and the tales themselves are well-crafted. I’m satisfied that the cash outlay to acquire the hardcvover was money well spent. This book is only available directly from the publisher, Dark Regions Press, but their web site is filled with interesting fiction to tempt you, including free sample stories from a number of their authors. Stop by for a look, and be sure to tell them Flames Rising sent you.

review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Brunner The Bounty Hunter: Omnibus edition Review

Available at RPGNow.com

Note: This review contains spoilers; if the reader expects to play in a Trail of Cthulhu campaign that features this adventure, proceed accordingly.

Set in one of the most remote places on Earth, the Black Drop is an adventure for Trail of Cthulhu. Investigators, for reasons of their own, are on hand to witness the dismantling of an unsuccessful colonizing effort in the bleak and largely inhospitable Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. There are rumors that the Kerguelens were once part of an ancient continent: a place of advanced learning and magic – Lemuria. Something ancient stirs beneath these islands – something unwholesome and hungry…

The Black Drop is an intriguing adventure in several ways. First and perhaps most notable is the fact that a German vessel has arrived at the island, and several of her crew – including an SS officer, are there to save the world from a great evil. This goes against everything we’ve come to expect from Nazis in history and popular culture, so their intentions, particularly to those familiar with the film Raiders of the Lost Ark – will likely come as a great surprise.

Second, one or more of the player characters may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the world. While the possibility of this is a central theme to games involving Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, it’s rare that such an outcome is so unavoidably certain. The German party is here to prevent the God of the Black Stone from being freed; all have come willingly, and all but one of those participating in the ceremony to contain the dark god will die or go mad. As events transpire, they suddenly find themselves two men short of the absolutely necessary minimum, and desperately need to find replacements in order for their ritual to succeed. Will any of the investigators volunteer for this grisly, suicidal task?

Third, the very remoteness of the locale makes getting the characters there and involved in the story something of a challenge. To say that the Kerguelens are off the beaten path is to understate the matter by thousands of miles. The only reason to come anywhere near the Kerguelens would be specifically to visit them, and there’s really no sensible reason for most to do so.

Historically, these islands were colonized by French settlers in real life as a potential sheep-raising operation, in much the same way as the Falkland Islands were colonized by the British. The climate and environment of the Kerguelens are suitable for little else, and the mineral wealth of the place is negligible. When the sheep farming proved not to be a viable commercial concern, the enterprise was abandoned. In real life, the Kerguelens today are inhabited by only a few dozen persons – mostly scientists at the French satellite and missile tracking station, geologists and biologists. Sheep are still raised on one of the islands.

This setting flies in the face of most Pulp-style games where vicariously experiencing exotic locales form no small fraction of the appeal. Even so, if the GM can make a plausible argument for the presence of the investigators (and a number of solid justifications are offered in this book), the battle is won. The only thing left is to set events in motion and allow the players the room to explore.

Author Jason Morningstar has taken a quirky, real-life premise and given it the Lovecraft treatment: what if there was an ancient entity trapped under the island, and what if that entity used its powers to lure some of the resident humans into offering blood sacrifices to it to help it escape? History is full of such odd occurrences that can serve admirably – with a little tweaking – as the backdrop for gaming adventures, and this one seems tailor made for Trail of Cthulhu.

The investigators will rapidly be overwhelmed by their physical and psychological isolation from the rest of the world: telecommunications satellites and cell phones don’t exist in the 1930s, nor is there an airstrip there – even to this day. The only way to communicate between the island and the outside world in this time period is through messages delivered by ship, which can take weeks (if there is a ship present to begin with, which is rare.) In the heat of the moment, the investigators will find they have only days – or even hours – to do what needs to be done, with no outside help to be counted on.

The Black Drop is an intriguing adventure, suitable for from one to three game sessions. It includes a set of six pre-gen characters to facilitate a quick start to the game. Madness, isolation and a desolate, inhospitable landscape figure prominently; it is even less cheerful – if that’s even possible – than the average Cthulhoid adventure. I applaud Mr. Morningstar’s use of the quirky setting and clever premise to craft an worthy adventure in The Black Drop. The opportunity it offers for an incredible and wholly satisfying gaming experience should not be underestimated.

Rating: Four out of five stars.

Reviewed by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Pelgrane Week: That Old Black Magic: Writing The Big Hoodoo
2. Pelgrane Week: The Dead White World Review
3. Pelgrane Week: The Origins of the Occult Guide

Available at DriveThruHorror.com

Harlan County Horrors, edited by Mari Adkins, is billed as an anthology of regionally-inspired tales. With Harlan County being in the heart of coal country, one might expect a number of the tales to touch on aspects of mining, and that assumption is correct. However, there’s more to Harlan than the mines; for one thing there’s the people themselves, and where there are people, scary stories are sure to follow. These twelve stories are a showcase for tales of Kentucky coal country by a fine crop of writers, many of them with close ties to the state.

The lead story, “The Power of Moonlight” by Debbie Kuhn is a bitter lesson about a woman scorned and the folly of rash acts. It was a very good selection to kick off the anthology. Maurice Broaddus’ “Trouble Among the Yearlings” is a subtle tale that captures well the claustrophobia of being trapped in a mine. In “Spirit Fire”, Robbie Sparks weaves a tale that warns about making a deal that seems too good to be true.

Ronald Kelly’s “The Thing At the Side of the Road” has a darkly humorous twist – at first. “Inheritance” by Stephanie Lenz was my favorite of the collection, and possibly the scariest story of the bunch. I also liked Alethea Kontis’ “The Witch of Black Mountain”, another woman scorned tale that turns out a bit differently for the protagonist than does “The Power of Moonlight.”

Do the stories capture the feel of Harlan County? Having never been there it’s difficult for me to say. What the tales do capture is a feeling of loneliness, of desperation, and of a hardscrabble existence in a remote place where good paying jobs are few and far between. Pulling coal from the ground pays well, but takes its toll on everyone eventually, and many don’t survive the task. The stories also capture the natural beauty of the area, with its dark, rugged mountains and thickly-forested gullies and streams; towns that seem to still cling to a century ago, and people who could have lived in any time period during the last thousand years.

One criticism I would offer on Harlan County Horrors is that not all of the tales are horror stories per se; many are, but some seem more science fictional than truly horrifying – though horrific elements are definitely present – and one or two defy clear categorization. None of this is necessarily bad; the stories are uniformly well-written and engrossing, but not all met my expectations. That’s a tall order in any case for an anthology; part of the reason why so many anthologies seem a hit-or-miss proposition is precisely because each reader brings a different perspective and different expectations to any book.

Regardless, Harlan County Horrors is a worthy addition to any horror collection. At 180+ pages it’s not an overwhelming reading project, but the stories themselves are page-turners, bringing me to the end of the book sooner than I wanted. It is a satisfying read and, at $16 for a trade paperback-sized edition or $5 for a download, it’s well worth the money.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Review by Bil Bodden

Related posts:

1. Curse of the Full Moon Review

Available at DriveThruComics.com

Originally published in 2009, Dusk is a graphic novel written by David Doub that follows the lives of Eve and Ash. Ash is a vampire, and Eve is a human who takes regular drinks of Ash’s blood that he provides to her. Ash seems a very thoughtful and considerate master, very much unlike many of the other vampires we encounter in these stories.

Ash’s blood gives Eve enhanced strength and speed after she consumes it. Eve needs the extra advantage Ash’s blood provides when going up against other vampires – she’s taken on the responsibility of being Ash’s right hand. Ash appears to be some sort of sheriff or enforcer, capturing misbehaving vampires and bringing them in for punishment; Eve handles her share of the workload with zeal and efficiency. Clearly the experience is exhilarating for Eve; so much so that she appears to be growing addicted to drinking Ash’s blood.

When a private detective starts to follow Eve, she sets a trap and corners the man on a dark street. Sent by an insurance company, the P.I. finds Eve, formerly Susan Douglas, is not quite so deceased as was once thought. Eve uses a bit of magic to ensure that the detective won’t rat her out – or that if he does, at least she’ll be able to find him easily, and we begin to wonder about the real nature of Susan’s/Eve’s life. She clearly wants her old life to stay dead, and we seem to know less about her than we first thought after page one.

Available both in printed graphic novel and in PDF formats, Dusk has a solid storyline, with a great deal of future potential. Will Eve take the plunge and ask Ash to turn her into a vampire? So far, Ash seems quite benevolent, even fond of Eve; one wonders how long he will remain so. One also begins to wonder how long Eve will remain sane; her morality shows signs of being a bit more fluid and situational than may be healthy for her.

Dusk features an illustration style that is simultaneously spare and lush; simple but lovingly rendered. While most scenes have a fairly dark background (vampires – remember?) they also feature a fair amount of detail touches – legible signs on walls, clearly identifiable jewelry, and so forth – that add to the impression of the art being more lavish than it actually is. A second volume of the Dusk story, presumably continuing where the first left off and also available in both print and download formats, came out last year.

Dusk is a good story and should be a must for fans of the vampire genre, particularly of more modern vampires like Sonja Blue or those from White Wolf Publishing’s World of Darkness. Even if you’re not a big fan of the toothy ones, Dusk is a fun read and easy on the eyes. I can’t wait to dig into volume 2…

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Calebros Graphic Novel Review
2. Designing Dusk by David Doub
3. Fluorescent Black Graphic Novel Review

It may come as no surprise that I’ve been thinking about horror lately. It occurred to me recently that there has, at no point in modern US history, been such a vast array of horror material – across all media – available for consumption. Not only do we have a regular horror television series currently airing (Walking Dead) plus many more series no longer in production available in DVD collections, but also a ton of fiction, both in novel and in comic/graphic novel formats. It’s a great time to be a horror fan!

I was glued to AMC’s series The Walking Dead ever since I stumbled across a preview trailer online last summer. My wife complained about the amount of space it took up on our already full DVR, so I conceded and deleted the recordings. The DVD of the first season is available now; I’m waiting for the time to be right to buy a copy. As the highest-rated series to date on AMC, and one of the top five shows from 2010 in terms of ratings on basic cable, the Walking Dead has broken new ground as a continuing horror series. Renewed for another two seasons thanks to its sterling success out of the gate, I have high hopes for the continuing adventures of Deputy Rick Grimes and the rest of the group.

I recently finished several books, reviews of which will be coming up here on Flames Rising in the near future. The first is an adventure for Trail of Cthulhu, titled The Black Drop. Written by Jason Morningstar, The Black Drop finds the investigators going up against an ancient, evil entity; the difference is that this time they have allies of an unexpected sort. Harlan County Horrors is a fun collection of stories that use coal country in general and Harlan County, Kentucky specifically as the backdrop. Dusk is a graphic novel about Ash – a vampire – and Eve – his human assistant, and their adventures dealing with renegade vampires, newly-turned undead, and the fine line between love and obsession. Intriguing and a fast read, Dusk is written and drawn by David Doub.

In researching the H.P. Lovecraft FiIm Festival – held in Los Angeles September 16 & 17 of 2011 – I came across a few films that debuted there over the last couple years. One in particular caught my eye: The Burrowers combines horror and Wild West themes – two of my vices – so I had to check it out. I had to admit being disappointed. The concept was intriguing: (From the Netflix notes) “When the men on a pioneer homestead are brutally murdered and the women and children go missing, a posse sets out to find them, assuming they’ve been abducted by Indians. But the truth turns out to be much more horrific. As they find more bodies, it soon becomes clear that something from beneath the ground is brutally attacking humans. Clancy Brown, William Mapother and Sean Patrick Thomas star in this horror film set in the Great Plains during the 1870s.”

The acting was solid, but the script seemed a bit disjointed and weak. The monsters and their motivation are plausible, but I felt there were enough plot holes to make this film more like Swiss cheese than a serviceable film. The Burrowers is well worth a look on Netflix or for a cheap rental in my opinion, but my advice would be don’t buy a copy before you’ve seen it.

On a final note this month, Odyssey Con is coming up very soon – April 8-10 at the Radisson on Odana Road in Madison, Wisconsin. I, along with fellow Flames Rising columnist Monica Valentinelli will be appearing there on panels, along with luminaries Robin Laws, Sarah Monette, J.V. Jones, James Frenkel, and many others. If you don’t have a membership yet, hurry; rates go up as of April 1. Be sure to stop in and say hello.

Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Bill’s Month In Horror: Gen Con 2011
2. Back from GenCon 2011
3. Got a Horror Fan to Buy For? Steve Recommends…

Available at Amazon.com

Revere: Revolution in Silver

Written by EDWARD LAVALLEE
Illustrated by GRANT BOND
Archaia Studios Press
130 pages

Mash-ups are all the rage; whether it be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, or any number of lesser-known works, putting two seemingly unlikely things together has become a literary obsession recently. Revere: Revolution in Silver carries on this growing tradition, positing that, in his spare time, Paul Revere was actually a werewolf hunter and member of an occult organization dedicated to defending the world against supernatural threats.

With the early days of the American Revolution as the backdrop, Revere: Revolution in Silver takes this premise and runs with it. Doing an interesting bit of world-building, writer Lavallee and artist Bond create a whole new mythology around the famous American revolutionary.

The art style is reminiscent of the Hellboy comics from Dark Horse: spare and cartoonish, and occasionally appearing a bit rough. I find the style perfectly serviceable for the medium, and have no quarrel with it. I like the subtle, effective shading done to achieve different lighting effects – from overcast to torchlit night and full daylight – it caught even caught my artistically untrained eye.

Without giving too much away, it seems apparent that Revere and the chief villain know each other and have history together. Their animosity towards each other is clear, though an explanation is not forthcoming – at least in this first volume. The dialogue is clear and fairly concise, with use of period speech used sparsely for effect rather than overwhelmingly so. A few cliches pop up from time to time, but nothing to really draw one’s attention.

The storyline is solid and eventful, the characters have depth and sensible motivations, and the world-building at work is intriguing; there are more than just werewolves prowling around Colonial New England, and wandering around at night – whether alone or in a group – is clearly a chancy and potentially dangerous proposition. While I wouldn’t view this as a major complaint in any way, I would like to have seen a slightly less heavy hand in portraying the villains – the British are totally insufferable bastards in the story, and while we know that this was true from time to time, there were also less than pleasant people on the other side as well.

At $19.95 for a print copy, or about $10 for a download, the pricing is fairly standard and pretty reasonable. I bought a download copy on spec – just because it sounded interesting – and I wasn’t disappointed. I look forward to future issues and continuation of the current plot arc; I’m eager to see where Lavallee and Bond take this story.

Rating: Four out of Five stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Related posts:

1. Revere: Revolution in Silver Comic Review
2. Preview of Silver Ladder for Mage