Runequest: Monster Island - an Overview

I'm still working through my physical copy of Book of Quests (don't have it in PDF) but I also have Monster Island in PDF format thanks to some timely PDF sales at rpgnow. This means I can provide some more details for those interested in what they get for the $14.99 PDF sale price.

Monster Island is one part sandbox setting and one part monster manual for Runequest 6. The book consists of a lengthy introduction to Monster Island proper, including a map. The print version has a full color pull-out version, and a separate Companion download for $4.99 includes this map with some collected charts and tables; presumably this keeps the price down on the main PDF. For those concerned about price, the black and white maps in the main book are perfectly serviceable. I haven't picked up the Companion yet, but will let you know if it's worth it when I do (come on rpgnow sales, don't fail me now!)

The  book spends roughly 187 pages on the island itself, although that includes 15 pages on the general nature of sandbox campaigns and how to run them. The latter half of the book is about 94 pages of monsters, and the book includes a wide variety of new beasties for your Runequest campaigns (and easily adapted to Legend, Magic World or BRP if you're using any of those systems, too). Here's a summary of the new monsters for those interested (note that some campaign specific monsters that appear in the setting section are not included):

Adaro (shark men, samebito)
Ahuizotl
Alan (moon bats)
Alicanto
Allosaurus
Ankylosaurus
Giant Ant Lion
Carnivorous Ape
Arumco (hellfrog)
Assassin Conch (terrifying sea snails)
Aswang (yes! I love Aswang as monstrous foes)
Bakunawa (a very neat and freaky shadow eel)
Bone Wraith
Bultingin (werehyenas!)
Bunyip
Byangoma (wise, fortune-telling magic birds)

...let me pause a moment to state that this monster list is AMAZING so far. Loads of fascinating and decidedly non-western mythical beasts, ripped right out of mythology and folklore....

Cannibal Spirit (wendigo)
Giant Centipede (welcome to Interzone, biatch)
Giant Clam
Cob Hobbler (probably one of the neatest new monsters in the book....a parasitic infestation that turns the victim into a spider-monster)
Giant Cockroach
Deathdrip Flowers
Deinonychus
Dudreyas (a carnivorous plant with a siren like twist)
Dune Haunter (a sand ghoul!)
Dziwozoana (succubus-like swamp demons)
Giant Eagle
Giant Eel
Lightning Eel
Ettin (treated as a template applied to other humanoid creatures that would like more than one head; did not include a sample...i.e. an ogre-ettin or something, unfortunately, but the template is easy enough to apply)
Febrilis (winged snakes)
Flocks, Hoards, Packs and Shoals (a mess of tiny monstrosities and how to manage the swarms of such, includign bats, leeches, pirahna and more)
Flying Worms (oh yeah, they went there...purely awesome here)
Gibberer (a template for one possessed by a dark spirit)
Heterodontosaurus
Hitotsume-Kozo (a jump to Japanese legend, cyclopean Japanese boys....and we all know that Japanese children are terrifying)
Huakaipoor (warrior ghosts)
Ophidian Hydra (OMG a hydra at last statted out in Runequest. The world may end soon)
Isnashi (skunk ape meets King Kong)
Ivory Impaler (another deadly plant....Monster Island is a tough place....)
Succubus Ivy (...)
Giant Jellyfish
Jempulex (okay, I love this one...a hand-sized wasp that stings you to turn you into its zombie servant)
Kanaima (a werecreature formed from people bonded with/possessed by shape-shifting spirits)

...This is already my favorite monster book, fyi....

Kapre (bear men)
Kitsune (fox folk, natch)
Kraken (!)
Kulamyu Pod (we're in little shop of horrors land here now)
Lakooma....okay, this is one of my favorites....it's...well:

Lammasu (the classics! yay!)
Blood Lizards
Thorny Lizards
Lizardfolk of Monster Island (at last...at long last....lizardfolk, real, honest-to-god lizardfolk in the rule system most suited to their use and presentation in classic pulp fantasy....swoon; EDIT: sigh, I keep forgetting that RQ6 has lizardmen in it, too; its MW and some other D100 system books that are missing them. My bad!)
Malcathorn (a nasty beast)
Manananggal (a terrifying form of vampire....one of my favorites, used it extensively in it's Pathfinder incarnation)
Mantithorn Cactus
Megalonyx
Mokele-Mbembe (my wife, being the cryptozoologist she is, should be happy to see him show up here)
Moonflower (there are a lot of deadly plants on Monster Island...)
Morko (a unique monstrous hag)
Lotus Moth
Naga (ah yes, one of my favorites)
Nanaue (weresharks of a fashion....disturbingly so...)
Nukekubi (a variant head-detaching monstewr ala the pennangalan, sweet zombie Jesus this book has a lot of cool monsters)
Olgoi (nasty worm)
Ophidiodis (literally a ball of snakes)
Oviraptor
Pachycephalosaurus
Panopticus (terrifying giant amoeba)
Pihuichen (another flying snake, this time vampiric)
Possessed Plant
Polong (a hideous thing created from the collected blood of the murdered)
Quathil (Runequest gets its version of the flumph)
Rokurokubi (long necked demons who masquerade as normal by day)
Saltasaurus
Giant Scarab
Sentinel (giant golem-like animated entities)
Spellbreaker Serpent
Serpent People (one cannot have a place called Monster Island without both lizardfolk and serpent people; I can now put my Malleus Monstrum book away, MI has all I need)
Snapdragon (one can imagine at this point the list of safe flora on MI is tiny)
Spineapple Tree
Tengu (for those who are accustomed to playing Tengu as PCs, I think these would work for such just fine, too)
Tetrapus (yet another great aberration; on MI they exude from the Smoking Mirror)
Therizinosaurus (hey....there are a lot of dinosaurs in this book...)
Tikbalang (another of my all time favorites; monsters of the forest formed from fetuses aborted by black magic)
Triceratops
Trifrond (read; triffid)
Tiger Turtle
Palm Vampire
Vorompatra (giant predatory flightless birds)
Vorslurp (brain eating slugs!)
Giant Vulture
Waheela (giant bear dogs)
Yeti (voormi...degenerate humanoids)

And that's just the regular bestiary. Many more sample monsters, NPCs and location-specific entities are detailed in the campaign section and the appendix is loaded with specific sample monsters. The best part of the appendix is on "The Gods That Walk," which is a polite way of saying "Kaiju!" Yep, we've got, among others (find the analogues...) Gamaru, Ghidoru, Kangu, Varanru (hint: Varanru is Gojira, m'kay) and more.

This is a loaded book. Will be buying the print version ASAP and now need to set my RQ6 campaign intentions to IMMEDIATE.

Monster Island is here!

It's out on RPGnow, as The Design Mechanism is always timing their releases for when I've just had a huge number of expenses and can't afford to buy something at that moment (very long and depressing story). Looks like it's available in print on TDM's site as well (here), and there is also a "Companion" set in PDF at both locations, too. I still don't see the sourcebooks showing up on Moon Design, though.

I snagged the Book of Quests on Ebay through one of the reliable regular vendors over there (Troll and Toad) as my FLGS has had a hard time getting this stuff in. I'll have to keep an eye out for it there, or maybe I can order it through TDM in a week or two.

Anyway.... I need to get a campaign going with the new RQ6 rules, I am way past due for starting one up. Maybe I can squeeze it in on a bi-weekly Saturday evening. FYI Book of Quests is so good that I might break my long-standinjg habit of not using modules to actually run the scenarios in that one. Pete, Loz and co. are doing some out-of-the-park amazing stuff over there.I should post a formal review, come to think of it. Maybe in a week or so.

Lost History of the Relic Kingdoms

The Undiscovered Lost History of the Relic Kingdoms and the First Gods

   No mortal knows the secrets of the Yagoth. Their legacy extends back to a time when the Relic Empire was young, and the first gods were born into existence. The people of this lost time sought the first great power over their realm, forging a crystal of such power that it contained within it the energy of creation and all existence. This power was too great for any one mortal to contain, and so twelve candidates were chosen, twelve mortals who were tasking with caring for a piece of the stone, while the final, thirteenth stone was place at the edge of the stars themselves, to serve as the binding force of creation, the conduit through which their twelve lesser stones drew all power.

   In this ancient time, a time before human men existed, there was great and lasting peace as the prehumans of this era could mold existence as they saw fit, granting immortality to their kin and peace to all. It was not until they experimented with the creation of lesser slave races that things changed. Humanity, elves and others were created to serve the gods and their divine kindred. The first men were no more than mindless slaves, but over time the designs of the gods grew more complex, and soon the divine race saw men as complex playthings. They enjoyed the games and conflicts that seemed to come naturally to these lesser beings. They toyed with them.

   These first humans and elves and others grew tired after untold centuries of slavery, and by way of events long lost to time they rebelled. They overthrew their masters, rose up in arms, and in revolt succeeded in slaying the gods. How this was properly accomplished was not entirely known to any save for the Yagoth.

   The Yagoth were an entire race of beings, who existed in the supreme darkness at the edge of the star system. They had lived in eternal darkness for untold eons, and predated all other creatures in existence, dwelling in their ancient cities upon the Thirteenth Planet of the star system. That was, until the Heart of the Crystal, the source of the first twelve Zodiac Stones, was set upon their world by the twelve young gods, who in their hubris saw fit to exterminate the Yagoth as vermin, so repulsive did they find the creatures, that they drove them from their planet and into the darkness between the stars.

   The Yagoth sought revenge. They plotted for eons, until they at last saw the gods make an error, for as the gods created life, the Yagoth learned quickly that they could possess and manipulate the lesser mortals, and they sowed the seeds of discontent amongst the slaves. They drove the creations of the gods to rise up, and through dark gifts in the form of the God Slayer weapons they granted them the power necessary to slay the first gods. The Yagoth granted this power to the mortals in exchange for the promise that the humans and elves would in turn seek out the Heart of the Crystal and take it far away, that the Yagoth could once more dwell on their dark world.

   The first humans who rose up and destroyed the gods were quick to seize the Zodiac Stones. They flung the god-slayer weapons then into a pit that led to the center of the earth, that there was no temptation to use them, though one long-forgotten avatar is said to have kept a single weapon hidden away. They then turned on the Yagoth, for the men who the Yagoth had thought so easily manipulated were clever and cunning, and with the power of the Zodiac Stones they could not be touched by the Yagoth. They cast out the demons, and swore to never let them return.

   Thus it was that the first in a long lineage of young gods came to pass. Men learned that they could never contain the power of the Zodiac Stones for as long as their forebears, for the immortal Nakal/Klippath were unique in this ability. Though none today remember it, no god has lift more than twenty thousand years before eventually dying; it was inevitable that the Zodiac Stones would require successors.

   Of the original gods, only the vestiges remain, and of those, only seven are known to manifest as forgotten shades, and possibly two which still seem to exist as mysterious forces (the Mania and the Divine Wind).

   And of the Yagoth? They dwell at the edge of existence, waiting for those curious moments when a hapless mage or scholar of Eredoth, Capac or Nimdragom finds one of the ancient summoning mirrors that allows them to manifest in the world of Chirak, that they might seek a time and place where opportunity will allow them to do the most harm to the descendants of those who killed their world and betrayed them, driving them out into the endless void of space. They have an undending hunger, and are immortal, impossibly old beings with an intense desire for revenge.

A Quick Overview of the Recent Cornucopia of Survival Horror and Zombie Games

There have been a lot of fresh zombie and survival horror titles hitting the PC and consoles lately....the last few months have been a veritable banquet for the undead vs. hearty suvivors! We all know about Resident Evil 6, which was released for the PC a month or two back...and of course I'll be blogging more about it's final campaign (and multiplayer) soon enough. In the meantime, some others worth mentioning (or warning you about):

Resident Evil: Revelations

I'll be properly reviewing this, but RE: Revelations is a fantastic upgraded port of the same game from the Nintendo 3DS lineup. I almost bought a 3DS to play this title, but then I remembered that Nintendo only releases one "mature" themed title on each of it's consoles to sucker older gamers in; the rest of their offerings are aimed squarely at 13 year old girls and emo boys for as far as the eye can see.

Either way waiting paid off; this is an amazingly fun game and truer to the spirit and style of classic Resident Evil than any of the recent offerings; it's proof you can upgrade the controls, spiff up the gun mechanics, and take the same general engine from RE 4 and RE 5 and make something that looks, feels and plays like classic RE. The multiplayer raid mode is amazingly fun, too!

Dead Island: Riptide

This was clearly intended to be a second DLC expansion when someone at Deep Silver realized they could make it a bit bigger, package a new island to explore, and chuck it out as a full title in its own right. I've played it for a few hours, but if you (like me) found yourself more or less burned out on the Dead Island style by the end of the first game then this one has exactly nothing new to offer. It's not the proper expansion everyone was hoping for, instead just being an effort at milking this particular engine for a bit more cash. PCGamer's review says it all, I feel.

The Last of Us

This PS3 exclusive from Naughty Dog has been all over game site news so if you haven't heard of it you must not be a console gamer or you come to my blog by way of the paper and pencil side of the equation. The Last of Us, in the time I've had to play it, is an amazing game and it's intro/prologue chapter is actually one of the best gaming experiences of this sort I've ever played, hands down. It's a very compelling title, perhaps even a bit too much so; I've been playing lots of Resident Evil just to wait for a time to properly savor (and wrestle with) the stark what-if reality of the apocalyptic world and its incredibly likable survivors The Last of Us imposes on our psyche.

State of Decay

An Xbox 360 exclusivc, and only $20 to boot, is an amazing zombie apocalypse sandbox adventure in a very rich, deeply explorable package with tons of interesting options. I hope it doesn't remain an exclusive forever; it feels like a title that more properly deserves attention on the PC. The fact that no one until now has made a full-on zombie apocalypse sandbox experience in third-person mode is kind of amazing, really. "Grand Theft Zombie" is a fantastic concept, and State of Decay fills this space very well. Sure, there's DayZ for Arma....but here at least you can worry properly about the zombies and not griefers!

So, final consensus? Get RE: Revelations, State of Decay and The Last of Us if you happen to have the right hardware for each. Get Dead Island: Riptide if you find it on sale for cheap and wanted more of the same from the original game.

Legends of Dawn is now out

In an exciting bit of news one of the few Kickstarters I backed is actually out today. It was released on Steam and shortly thereafter I received my key in email. Legends of Dawn is an indie-made isometric action RPG (near as I can tell), and it's now downloading. It was only only about four months late, positively timely by KS standards....will let you all know if it was worth the modest $15 investment once I get some time to play it!

Nook eats B&N Film at 11 - on the long term sustainability of the Nook Tablets and B&N chain stores

Interesting story here, another development in the ongoing woes of Barnes & Noble, the last national retail bookstore chain. I'm not really looking forward to seeing B&N disappear....but I can completely understand why it seems to be going that direction. B&N is indeed cannibalizing itself, was Nook store sales have to pull people away from physical retail chain sales. I haven't bought an actual physical book from B&N now for better than eight months, maybe longer. The last few times I went into their store I simply brought my Nook and purchased the books I wanted on it, instead (it felt crass, but they do encourage this).

You'd think that this is just a transfer of cash flow from physical to virtual storefronts (moving their cheese around), but it sounds like B&N still has bigger problems as the Nook appears not to be as successful as, say, Amazon and it's Kindle. My guess is that Amazon has a general overall advantage with a wider range of ebooks that are competitively priced (you can survive quite nicely on the Kindle with $2.99 titles if you don't mind sticking with second rate authors, smaller publishers or sale items) and of course Kindle has no physical chain of stores to drag it down.

I hardly ever buy physical books anymore, but have a knee-jerk sense that physical book stores are important. I do still go and buy an occasional paperback at Hastings or the local mom and pop book store (Page One, or Titelwave....yeah, not a lot of book stores around here). Despite having the same general love of books that most bibliophiles do --the literal sensation of holding a book...finding a book, and reading it being somehow very significant-- I have to concede that in the last year and a half I have grown heavily dependent on my ereaders. Why? I can adjust the screen lighting, the font size, the type of font...I can make it easier to read for my aging eyes, essentially. I can carry a single tablet reader around and have access to a thousand books in my library. My biggest worry about reading from my tablet is accidental decision paralysis. My second biggest worry is it gets destroyed or lost....but my entire collection exists in the cloud, right? I can re-download without effort. If I lost my physical library in a fire or through some accident, it would be 100% gone. Not so with the ebooks...right?

Maybe, if B&N goes under, this is going to put forth an unfortunate test of the viability of the market for electronic libraries and their sustainability. If B&N went under without a provision for the retention of Nook libraries to purchasers, that could be very bad for the future of electronic retailers who don't use a model where "you buy it, you keep it," like Baen Books. Likewise, if everyone with a Nook suddenly finds its a glorified paperweight or an average Google Play tablet...well, that could be a real blow for electronic readers down the road. I guess B&N is going to be a test case for just how this works out.

As I'm typing this there's an NPR story on the radio talking about B&N and the Nook, suggesting that they plan to consolidate back to dedicated e-ink Simpletouch tablets since those attract serious readers, and that any more dedicated products in the future might come out of a partnership with some entity like Microsoft. That implies that B&N feels that lower Nook tablet sales are driven by a lack of competitiveness in that particular market....and that those who do buy, say, the HD+ are not dedicated readers, thus not contributing to putting money into the Nook Store side of the equation. Interesting.

I actually would pick up a e-ink reader for the Nook but the one I want (with the backlight) has gotten trashed repeatedly online in review after review for having a common glaring "pinpoint light" flaw in its design. Still, the premise that a book store chain which focuses on providing a dedicated reader device and only a reader device, rather than a glorified tablet, sounds sensible. Maybe if B&N realizes that they can't compete in the same space as Google and Apple, that they really only need to beat out Amazon's Kindle...maybe that will be the best way for the business to go. I guess time will tell.

Spirits, Demons and Vestiges of Eredoth

Known Spirit Saints of the Relic Kingdoms:

Sethrys, the Winter Queen, Lady of Monsters: This powerful woman has manifested a control over ice and cold in her domain, and now resides deep in the heart of the Frostmounts, ruling giants and other monstrous kin. She is a terrifying being, neither saintly nor spiritual, and seeks to conquer Eredoth one day, though her timetable of action is a mystery. She has been in existence for eighty years now, and it has been fifty years since she led an army of monsters northward to the capitol of Calladania in the Northern Duchies where she waged war for five years until the spirit-saint Augusteros rallied the soldiers of the land to drive her back.

   Of those who doubt her “sainthood,” one need only talk to the giants, ogres, and other kin who call her such; she is regarded as a powerful force among the giantkin for unifying them into a kingdom of their own.

Augusteros, The Sword Saint: Augusteros is still known to walk the land, for as has been pointed out, if he had passed on then no memory of him would remain; he is considered the patron saint of soldiers, and bards have many stories to tell of his manifestation in times of need. He has been known of for more than a century now.

Killias, the Water Bringer: Killias was a young woman, touched by the Divine Wind while at sea, who changed to the form of a mermaid. She is now considered patron saint of sailors and of safe voyages in the Grey Sea. It is said that she considers herself a servant of Mataki.

Tarn, the Hunter: A rough old coot, Tarn was a ranger of the southern province and servant to king Emerad’s grandfather. He was fatally wounded in his old age while hunting, but the Divine Wind did not let him perish. He has not been seen in many years now, though on rare occasions in the woods some hunters claim to encounter him, continuing the hunt, and some starving families find game brought to their door by amysterious man they are certain is Tarn.

Miurnes, the Birth Giver: This patron saint of women and childbirth is said herself to have had a difficult birth and was about to die when the Divine Wind touched her, saving mother and child. Her daughter grew up to be the legendary sorceress Caedra, who dwells in her tower on the Isle of Saagarest. Miurnes appears at times to those women in need, acting as a mysterious midwife who assists in a difficult childbirth and then disappears after a child is born.

The Complication of the Yagoth and the Demon Gods of the West

   The people of Eredoth do not just have saints to benefit from, for they also have very old demons that haunt their land. These beings are called the Yagoth, and there is no consensus as to where they come from. Common belief holds that the Yagoth are actually possessed beings inhabited by the spirits of the lost Klippath of the Relic Empire, twisted and shaped into monsters in body and soul by these ancient spirits, hungry for living flesh. A more heretical notion is that the Divine Wind itself creates them, and that it is not a benevolent force, but a natural force which must balance good and evil, and so for every spirit saint there must be a Yagoth. No one is sure what is true about these beings, other than their insatiable lust for cruelty and death. Only a very few witches and warlocks know that there are ancient obsidian mirrors that can be found in the Relic Empire ruins, capable of summoning the Yagoth, and that mortals are alarmingly susceptible to possession and transmogrification by these demons.

   Yagoth are believed (rather terrifyingly) to be entirely unrelated to the so called Demon Gods of the west; most Eredish theologians believe, strongly, that the Demon Gods are malevolent apparitions that have confused the western empire of Xoxtocharit into believing that they are infernal beings of godlike power, for the notion that there may be a hundred or more evil gods in the world is almost too much for them to contemplate. Nindragom, not known for its scholars and theologians, nonetheless has a cult of battle clerics that pride themelves on their dedication to slaying the western cultists and mastering these demons, for they feel that the Xoxtocharit demons are merely another manifestation of the Mania, changing mortals into demons.

   In truth, the Xoxtocharit have created a complicated hierarchy of belief and worship centered on the so called “servants of the betrayers,” which is a euphemism for the greatest servants and generals of the Betrayer Gods from the era of the Apocalypse, a period of time about which they know a great deal more than most scholars in the easterlands are aware of. Indeed, the memories of the apocalypse have all but been erased in the dominion of the Relic Empires, for reasons that are not at all obvious.

The Seven Known Vestiges

   Of the many names and figures identified in the ancient script of the Relic Empire, only seven names have been determined to have divine significance, and as such these seven are believed to be the ancient gods of the lost Nakal/Klippath. Dubbed “vestiges” the first manifestation of a known vestige was caused by the tribe of elves once called the Ulithirians, and now called the Kaddam, which means “Shadows” in the Relic Script, they say. These elves followed the darkness of the endless passages of caverns in the Frostmounts until discovering an ancient city of the Relic Empire, still intact yet submerged in the mountains and somehow protected by a vast dome from the crushing rock above. Within this city was an ancient tomb to the dead god called Zaramast. The elves disturbed the vestige of Zaramast, and with its last power it changed them forever, altering the elves into the shadowy creatures of darkness that they now are. The elves were suffused with arcane knowledge from the shadow god, and have sought to appease and feed the vestige power through sacrifice, to learn more of its ancient secrets.

   What follows is a summary of the known vestiges. All of the following have hidden cults throughout Eredoth, Capac and Nindragom, and some are openly worshipped among the Iargan barbarians. No one, not even their cultists, doubt that these are mere shadows of dead gods, whose power and lust for existence was so great that long after their power is gone, their bodies, slain and their souls either destroyed or reborn, these whispery shades of desire continue to exist.

Vestige Name                   Aspect                                          Manifestation

Narinath                           vestige of knowledge and secrets      an ancient scholar

Malin’ithaer                      vestige of machines                         an infernal contraption

Zaramast                          vestige of hate and darkness             a vile dark elf killer in the darkness

Skael                                vestige of deceit and trickery            a sly rogue

Emiridon                          vestige of the cosmos                       an enveloping darkness or wind

Nisultyr                            vestige of creation                            a burning point of light

Meremeth                         vestige of life                                  a shadowy woman

Yazda Grahath                  vestige of monstrosities                    a brutal shifting beast

   The vestiges are well and truly dead, but the lingering essence of each shade is so powerful that they continue to influence the living a hundred thousand years later. Each of the above aspects can be invoked by those who know the secrets to communing with the vestiges, and extracting lost secrets and rituals from them. It is said, for example, that many orc sorcerers have learned to commune with Yazda Grahath, and from her have learned the secret of creating terrible birthing pools, out of which hideous monsters emerge. In northern Calladia, the powerful Sect of the Burning Sky have learned to commune with Emiridon, and in turn have drawn on this vestige to learn arcane secrets of the cosmos.

   The vestiges are almost insanely dangerous. They can sustain moments of existence by stealing the life and souls of those who they are contacted by; failure to properly contain or ward against a summoned vestige can rapidly prove fatal, though luckily a vestige can only sustain itself from stealing the lives of the living, and then gaining only a few minutes of existence when it does so. Even the more benevolent vestiges find it almost impossible to resist the theft of others’ souls, though they may warn those around them when they are about to do harm.

  Vestiges can manifest naturally adjacent to ancient ruins, especially in ruins that once contained great temples of worship to the old gods. On very rare occasion some seers and oracles can act to channel the dead minds of these beings, a more indirect (and sometimes safer) way of communing with them, though only those born with this unique gift can do so.

Next: Lost History

Resident Evil 6: The Jake Muller Campaign

It is entirely possible I am the only one who really cares about Resident Evil 6 today, although I imagine other RE fans like myself are possibly revisiting the game in the last weeks of June as the game's actual timeline places most of the big action during this period. A pity the cool BSAA phones everyone uses in the game aren't real! But I guess I'll accept not having holographic phones in this universe if it also means being safe from horrendous mutating viruses.

All of the following gameplay was on the PC edition of the game, which I jumped to after it was released. For the record, the PC version plays and feels much tighter than the Xbox 360 version, and looks better too. But we all knew that! It's a given, PC trumps console, hardly worth pointing out.

The Jake Muller campaign is the third of four campaign arcs that intertwine through the convoluted yet somehow simple Resident Evil 6 story line. Jake Muller is the illegitimate love child of the late Albert Wesker (last seen in RE 5 in the bottom of a volcano) and some unnamed woman of German or Austrian ancestry (if the last name is anything to go by). Jake is young blood in a game where the lead characters are all pushing 35 or older, at minimum (which means Leon and Chris are positively geriatric by Japanese RPG hero standards!) so presumably he and his companion Sherry Birkin (the little girl from RE 2) are destined to be primary heroes for the future of the RE universe...assuming Capcom doesn't get a wild burr up its ass and decide to reboot the franchise, which would be a silly decision in my opinion. The RE franchise works really well with history, and rebooting what has come before means chucking a load of amusing, interesting and occasionally disturbing and horrifying back-story, which can add plenty of grist for the mill to future entries in the franchise.

Since Capcom added an amateur hour difficulty setting to RE 6 title it's been a lot more fun to play and consequently the really wacko QTE events don't even stand out now because they barely exist as a thing for player's on Newb difficulty. As a result, I enjoyed the Jake campaign with almost zero stress and very few deaths; the hardest elements of the campaign were usually with screwing up on the "running away controls" for those moments when the massive brute-mutant Ustanak is chasing you. I could bump myself back up to normal difficulty for more of a challenge....but why bother? This game's control scheme is just wonky enough that there seem to be only two difficulties to start: "cakewalk," followed by "smash controller in rage at another senseless death caused by bad camera/control schemes with unavoidable deaths that can only be beaten through severe repetition" mode. They shorten that last mode's title to "normal" because it's hard to put all that on one icon to click.

But to summarize: read some other RE 6 reviews that mention the Jake Muller campaign. They usually complain about how painful the unarmed combat is, especially when you start meeting the rasklapanje for the first time. I can personally attest to the fact that the part in the Leon Kennedy campaign where you meet the rasklapanje (on normal mode) was insanely painful. Well, the good news is on easy difficulty the unarmed combat isn't just fun, its almost preferable to anything else, which is amusing since in easy mode you will never run out of ammo, and therefore fighting with unarmed style is purely an aesthetic choice.

Anyway, the Jake Muller campaign is all about a young, angry dude who's gotten into the privatized mercenary army lifestyle. He's on the wrong side this time, working with the J'avo in Serbia where Chris Redfield and other BSAA agents are basically at war with the terrorists. There's a lot of unspoken backstory in the RE 6 story, some of which you'll get to see if you persevere and find the mysterious serpent tokens hidden throughout the game. This is a huge flaw with the game; it should have liberally splashed endless notes, historical bits and dossiers all over the place for people to find rather than "gating" it behind hard-to-find tokens that allow you to access this info only when not actually playing. Some of this backstory revolves around various armed militias that have taken to securing bio-organic weaponry, which they in turn adopt in cult-like fashion to suffuse themselves with the stuff of super-soldiers (at least until they start mutating...)

Jake's on the wrong side of this mess when in comes Sherry Birkin, who is now all grown up and working for the NSA as a special agent, after being raised and tutored by the dept. head Mr. Simmons (another factoid not revealed in the actual game but buried in a hard to find data bit). Sherry, who has some unusual healing properties thanks to her mad scientist father's tampering is looking for Jake, who has some weird immunities as well thanks to his genetic history. Apparently Wesker fooled around sometime after he first started treating himself to T-Virus injections (or was he up to the G-Virus by then?)

The rest of the Jake Muller campaign is a lengthy sequence of escapes and captures, with some interesting locations including an exotic Chinese mansion and a bunch of cross-overs with the Chris and Leon campaigns. By the time you get to the end, it's been a fun ride and nice to see how these two fit in to the story, but at the same time there weren't a lot of unanswered questions on the Jake/Sherry side of the story. A lingering sense of growing familiarity between the two characters is ever present, and I am sure it has spawned more than a little fanfic out there (not going to look, I just know this is how fanfic works; never mind the Leon/Chris/Jake fanfic I am sure is out there too! Or the rasklapanje/Jake/Chris....well, you get the idea), but whatever unholy spawn Sherry and Jake are capable of producing will probably be reserved for Resident Evil 12 in 2028.

There wasn't a lot to belly-ache about in this campaign. If you didn't feel like playing it you wouldn't miss much, but if you enjoyed Leon and Chris's campaigns, then you might as well jump into this one, too. It was fun, it didn't add much, but it still filled in some of the cracks in the RE 6 tale-at-large.

As an aside, I blew through a replay on easy mode for the Leon Kennedy campaign. Maybe it was because it was the PC version, and maybe it was because easy mode is really, really easy, but it was ridiculously easy this time around and took maybe five and half hours to complete (contrasted with 13+ hours on normal mode before). It was dramatically more enjoyable this time around, even though I found Leon's Dante-like descent into the Tall Oaks cemetery hill (a "hill" in name only, for this sucker is very deep and hollow) to be just as ludicrous as ever....but because the easy mode made it a fun ride instead of a digital stress test I actually had fun. While playing it though, I still felt that they needed to inject a great deal of story exposition into the game, somewhere....somehow. Allow the many hidden locked secrets to be found more easily and accessible in-game, for example. Have Mr. Simmons monologuing on a speaker in the catacombs or something, anything, to explain exactly what the hell he was thinking, contaminating so many corpses, then arming them with torches and dynamite. Never mind the zombie shark thing!

Next up is the Ada Wong campaign. This one, of all the above, should be most interesting because it is clear that there is some sort of convoluted hidden story in RE 6 about her feud with Simmons and how in the end it is thanks to her that everything goes to pot.

After that: a genuine return to survival horror in a manner indisputably Resident Evil-ish in the form of Resident Evil: Revelations! A game that proves Capcom doesn't need to spend massive amounts of cash on a hybrid zombie horror flick meets Die Hard film; all they need to do is take the team that made RE: Revelations and tell them "more of this, please."

Eredoth and the Relic Kingdoms

This week: a return to Chirak proper, with details on the Relic Kingdoms of the far northeastern lands, east even of Xoxtocharit! This region of the campaign was first visited using 4E rules, but a return trip with Pathfinder is planned for the near future.

The Ancient History of Eredoth and the Relic Kingdoms

   Eredoth is a land influenced by very old forces. Evidence of ancient ruins can be found throughout the ancient twin mountain ranges of the Anantes and the Frostmounts, but to most who dwell in this land the ruins are nothing more than a curious relic, a remnant of a lost age that may predate even the cataclysm that destroyed the old world. In fact, though few suspect it, these ruins are a hint of an even more ancient cataclysm, one which transpired eons before the event that very nearly destroyed the world twenty six hundred years ago. Though none suspect it, these ruins are relics from an era that even predates the concept of the gods of the Zodiac Stones.

   The mystery of these ancients was already lost knowledge to the Occultic, Inadasir and Mythric Empires that were at the height of power during the Last Age, and so what little knowledge existed of this time was not passed down. Scholars in both Eredoth and Copan within the ancient city of Astananku have had more opportunities to study these ruins and relics than any ancient long-dead scholar of the Lost Age, in fact, for though they do not know it, their twin mountain ranges were forged in the turmoil of the Last War, thrust forth by the machinations of the betrayer gods as the stresses of the elemental chaos very nearly tore the world apart. Entire mountain ranges thrust up from the boiling depths of the earth, rupturing forth and dragging with them the ancient ruins of this lost age, exposing entire cities to the surface for the first time in a hundred thousand years.

   Scholars who have studied these ruins call them the Nakal in Capac, meaning “Lost Ancestors,” while the scholars of Eredoth use the term “Klippath” which roughly means the “Impurities” or “evil spirits,” and stems from the Old Eredish word for Betrayer (specifically “The Betrayer” not just any betrayer).

   Studies in both lands have led to some rather interesting differing interpretations of the originators of these ancient ruins. The Capac see the Nakal as an ancient race of prehumans who may have accidentally seeded the world with humanity and its other races. They feel that the first ancient gods were born of the union between the Nakal and the humans they created, and that to contain the terrible power of divinity within these mortals they gifted them with twelve sacred primordial stones, hewn from one great rock, which in turn served to house these first hybrid spirits.

   In contrast, the scholars of Eredoth recognized that these ancient prehuman entities were malevolent, or at the very least may have created humanity as playthings. The scholar Nara’Pusin feels that there is evidence that the first men attained free will against the desire of their creators, and that they rose up in rebellion against the ancient Klippath, destroying their creators and seizing control of the twelve divine stones of power for themselves.

   Of interesting noteworthiness is the manifestation in this land of the so-called Vestiges and the spirit saints. How these two beings relate to the rest is unknown, but both exhibit very old power, and appear to be capable of terrible and good acts alike.

   The spirit-saints are seemingly created by a force given the appellation of the Divine Wind, mortals who are gifted temporarily with great power that eventually consumes their physical forms. These saints appear for a short while wandering the land and doing great deeds before eventually fading into mystery, and at last being extinguished by the primal force of this Divine Wind. It is so called because those few times it has been seen to manifest and a description has been recorded, the manifestation always appears in the form of a great gale or storm. Some have noted the similarity of this force to the worship of the two gods of Capac, Mataki and Hukil, who also manifest in like manner.

   These spirit-saints change when touched, and attain supernatural senses and powers, but they rarely live more than two or three centuries before a transmogrification, in which their empowered soul sheds their physical body like an unwanted husk; such times when this has happened have led to a shedding of greatly destructive energy, as the dissipating soul irradiates all around it. No one knows what happens to the soul of a manifesting spirit-saint afterwards; all contact and even memory of them is lost, save for written records.

   South of Eredoth in Nindragom there is a similar phenomenon, called the Mania by its followers. The Mania is a literal manifestation of crazed, maddening energy that both grants and takes life where it appears. Those who have witnessed a manifestation of the Mania say it is not unlike the same feeling of a manifestation of the Divine Wind, and some speculate it is related or even the same phenomena, merely augmented and manifest in a different manner. In any case, the Mania often changes those it touches, deforming them, imbuing them with infernal traits, or stripping them of all humanity; on rare occasions the Mania has drained the life force of an entire town or community, only to leave the dead to rise again. In Nindragom a cleric of the Mania is known as a Fate Dancer, and they are among a rare few who have managed to reach out, touch the Mania, and retain their mind while stealing some of its power. These Fate Dancers are regarded as powerful individuals, with terrible powers, but they are not revered as divine beings as the spirit saints are in Eredoth.

   In Capac no such unique manifestations plague the land, but  instead they have two distinct deities that they revere, the aforementioned Mataki and Hukil. Mataki is the goddess of the sea, a benevolent undine of great power and wisdom who provides oracular visions to her followers. She is prized as the greatest of beings among the coastal cities of lowland Capac. Her counterpart, Hukil, is a vile god of capricious storms and death, and he is seen as her antithesis in every manner. He is feared by the mountainfolk and lowlanders equally, and some claim he is the Lord of Demons, though no one knows for sure if the western Xoxtocharit worship him among their own dark cults or not. Both are said to be the successors to the gods of the Lost Age, and that each claimed a Stone of Power (what the Capac call the Atzil, meaning the Divine Stones).

   Though it is unknown in this land and abroad, there is a secret about these two gods. They are in fact the demiurges Kalie’yana (Mataki) and Piscrael (Hukil). To date, due primarily to the godless nature of the only western explorers and merchants to come to this land from Syrgia, no one has ever noticed the similarities in the iconography of worship for these two demiurges.

    Aside from all these entities, there is one more source of ancient power in the land, one which is clearly tied to the ancient mystery of the Nakal/Klippath, but precisely how remains uncertain. These beings are almost certainly known to be dead gods, ancient ghostly remnants of whatever deities ruled the ancient relic empires of the Nakal/Klippath. There have been seven such vestiges discovered, and entire cults have risen up around the obsessive practice of communing with these lost gods.

   The vestiges manifest almost as ghostly forces of will, sometimes possessing and altering willing hosts for brief moments of time. It has been observed by some (especially the renowned scholar Nara’Pusin) that this manifestation bears a similarity to what happens to those who are touched by the Divine Wind or the Mania, but usually with fewer consequences for witnesses around the event, and rarely if ever any permanent lasting effects on the host for the process. Nara’Pusin has argued, heretically to some, that the Mania and the Divine Wind might well be free-roaming ghosts of undiscovered vestiges for this reason.

Next: Spirit Saints, Demon Gods, and Vestiges of Eredoth

Ten signs you might be playing an Old School Shooter

Ten signs you might be playing an Old School Shooter:

#10. You often shoot allies because their texture resolution is almost indistinguishable from the bad guys

#9. Assuming you find an ally, they are usually already dying and live long enough to impart a few words of wisdom or direction to you before messily expiring. Bonus points if an alien pops out of them.

#8. Everyone builds fabulously expensive complexes filled with steam pipes that serve no discernible purpose other than to act as a launch point for an invasion (to or from, doesn't matter).

#7. Said complexes often contain numerous rooms that are clearly designed only to serve as murder holes and ambush points.

#6. Everyone...absolutely without exception...wants to kill you. There are never any janitors, engineers, or passers-by who aren't either interested in your death or about to turn into an alien and then kill you.

#5. You are more than halfway through the game and either have no idea precisely what the plot is or why you're where you are at.

#4. You're more than halfway through the game and have realized that there is no plot.

#3. Your life depends heavily on random canisters  chunks of meat, or convenient medi-kits lying around randomly.

#2. You never, ever carry enough ammo to take on a proper army, even though you are, and random ammo stashes are conveniently everywhere, no matter how unlikely or alien a world you are on.

#1. You regularly meet very large, tough opponents who can only be harmed by hitting a glowing six centimeter wide spot where they accidentally exposed their pulsing cyber-heart.