Idris: ... moving onto other news now and Tau forces in the Penros system have successfully repelled a surprise attack by pirate forces believed to be affiliated to Mont'au'Gue'la terror groups. The attack occurred on a Tau staging post above Penros X and marks the second major space combat by Tau expeditionary forces in the Penros system, coinciding with the appearance of a Class-8 space hulk in the system that now threatens to stretch Tau naval forces even further. Correspondent Farrier Seyburey has more for us now.
(In a massive cavernous launch bay a Manta loaded with enormous underwing missile pods tears past our field of view and zooms into space through a vast gaping opening)
Farrier (VO): No rest for the weary as Tau aerospace forces in the Penros system continue to face mounting pressure from rapidly escalating terrorist activity..
(The missile-laden underside of an SX-06 Barracuda covers the top corner of view as we see a vast cavernous rectangular launch bay rapidly shoot back and downwards, followed by the vast launch bay entrance and enormous shape of an Explorer class starship falling into the distance as the Barracuda takes off and races away on its launch trajectory)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. The latest attack has seen a major raid on the primary Tau staging point above Penros X by Mont'au'Gue'la pirate forces believed to be affiliated with the same terror group that launched an attack on Tau forces above Penros VI earlier this week..
(A relentless stream of missiles leaps upwards from a cluster of vertical launch cells amongst the sprawling hull and superstructure of a Tau starship)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. The terrorist flotilla, believed to have comprised no fewer than six capital ships and six frigates of Imperial design, staged a surprise attack on the staging point while a major Tau action group was undergoing replenishment in preparation for further deployment throughout the Penros system..
(Stars wheel and whirl around the front underside of an SX-06 Barracuda, jutting across from the top corner of view towards a distant speck of light fixed in the centre of view. After a few moments of chasing a large missile flings itself from the Barracuda's underside just out of view and then hurtles off towards the distant speck)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. Sources indicate that the Mont'au'Gue'la were initially able to achieve complete operational surprise, with only the local defensive patrol of Kir'qath class starships on alert at the onset of the attack..
(Stars wheel around the massive sprawling hull of a Merchant class starship as it manoeuvres)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. however Tau fleet intelligence was able to correctly predict the most likely avenues of attack and had the squadron positioned to quickly intercept the attacking ships..
(Viewed in monochrome through a Tau weapon seeker, the distant shape of a Styx class heavy cruiser slowly begins to grow out from the centre of view, wiggling to and fro as the missile tracks to keep it in the centre of vision. A stream of flashes races forwards from the ship before sweeping up and under out of view. At once the Styx rushes forward into the camera, zooming straight into a section of its hull before the image abruptly cuts)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. This allowed the Tau fleet enough time to activate its ships in holding, and the Tau were then able to hold their own in an 8 dec engagement that ultimately saw the surviving Mont'au'Gue'la forced to retreat after being outmanoeuvred by Tau ships exploiting the gas giant Penros X itself to attack the terrorist formation from their rear aspect..
(Viewed in monochrome through a Tau gun camera, a Dreadclaw pod hangs in the middle of view as it hurtles through space at an oblique angle. At once a small flickering flash of light zips up on a smooth intercept trajectory and slams into it from beneath, consuming the pod in a bright flash that leaves behind a spiraling cloud of glittering debris)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. Air Caste Command Penros has praised the professionalism of its pilots and starship crews in quickly responding to the emerging threat and repelling the attack despite continued use by the terrorists of advanced short-range etheric drives and self-repair capability onboard several warships..
(The top rear of a Manta sprawls across the bottom of view, furious coronas of light blasting from its engines as it speeds away from a distant speck of light in the centre of view. At once the entire vision is consumed by a searing unbearably white flash that dissipates in a moment, leaving behind a growing cloud of burning iridescent light where the speck once was)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. Tau officials still refuse to confirm or deny unsubstantiated claims that these capabilities may be somehow connected to so-called etheric lifeforms, but have confirmed the destruction of at least two such modified cruisers..
(The superstructure of a Tau starship sprawls across the bottom of view, a distant speck of light slowly drifting past where a horizon might be. At once the entire vision is consumed by a searing unbearably purple flash. A twitching visual glitch runs across the camera's view and the flash dissipates, leaving behind a swirling mass of burning iridescent light where the speck once was. A tiny visual glitch persists at the very epicentre of the light mass)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. from catastrophic damage to their plasma drives and etheric engines, as well as the loss of no fewer than three Mont'au'Gue'la torpedo frigates. Tau sources have also reported that the confirmed command ship of the attacking terrorists suffered crippling damage during the battle.
(A Tau Air Caste pilot, holding her helmet in one hand by her waist, talks into a microphone held from just out of sight)
Tau Air Caste: Mont'au'Gue'la Vattra Mont'[These Mont'au'Gue'la starships are tough, they've been modified with powerful short-range ether drives and sophisticated self-repair systems, and when they use those two together it makes them really hard to destroy because if you don't destroy the ship in one pass it will jump out of space and then return when it's self-repaired all the damage. Normally our guys will fly in multiple smaller forces to cripple many adversaries quickly, but doing that with these ships just lets them escape and self-repair. So instead we started concentrating our guys into single larger strike packages and then we started getting success and destroyed two of their capital ships. It means we hit fewer targets, but the targets we do hit, we destroy for good. I know we lost a lot of ships this time, but I'm still feeling good because we're learning how to beat these Mont'au'Gue'la and we're adapting to beat them]
(Farrier walks down a crisp white corridor aboard a Tau starship)
Farrier: The Tau ended the battle controlling the field and so have been able to keep open their main supply lines through the system, especially in preparation for additional ships en route to the Penros sub-sector - it's an important victory, but the Tau have paid an extremely heavy price for it, with Air Caste Command reporting the destruction of fifteen escort ships of various classes now that's already seriously heavy losses, but worse still is the reported destruction of two capital ships, the first such vessels lost by the Tau in the Penros system, including a Gal'leath class starship and that's a staggering blow, because these huge carrier starships are the backbone of the Kor'vattra the Tau navy, they're used for logistics, for command and control, for transporting and housing ground forces as well as being the primary offensive striking power of the Tau fleet so even losing just one of these starships is a massive setback for the Penros Coalition. Now, the good news is that the Gal'leath is reported to be relatively intact and in salvageable condition, but the other capital ship lost, which sources indicate to be a smaller Il'fannor class starship, did suffer a catastrophic plasma drive overload and will need to be replaced with another ship from out of system. Tau officials have reported investigations have been launched to determine why these ships were lost, as they were reportedly given multiple direct orders to disengage before suffering catastrophic damage, but in the meantime the Tau Air Caste will be stretched extremely thin across the Penros sub-sector.
(We focus in on a still frame from a Tau sensor readout, showing a massive contact in deep space)
Farrier (VO): The losses have further compounded the Penros Coalition's increasingly fragile state in space, coinciding with the detection of a massive class-8 space hulk in the system..
(Viewed in monochrome through a Tau imager, an enormous roughly shaped mass hangs in the cosmos)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. currently being tracked by Air Caste assets and projected to pass close by Penros VII later in the month..
(The superstructure of a Tau starship sprawls across the bottom of view. A distant speck of vividly bright light hangs in the centre of view, keeping pace with the Tau ship as it moves through space at speed)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. It's a glaring example of the growing holes in the coalition's blockade of the system, as more and more fleet assets are committed to hunting down the emergent Mont'au'Gue'la threat to coalition space superiority..
(A gleaming four-armed Tau orbital hangs in space above the vast face of a planet covered by oceans, landmasses and clouds)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. With Tau Air Caste assets further depleted, the coalition aerospace forces are now having to compromise in some areas..
(Digital contact icons shift and dance across the screen of a Tau sensor readout embedded in a cool grey workstation)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. shifting priority from containment measures for hazards like space hulks..
(A Barracuda soars across a twilight sky, teardrop plumes of brilliant flame fountaining from its engines as it cruises on afterburners high above the clouds. The body of its wingman is just visible along the bottom of view)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. as well as aerospace support for coalition ground forces embattled on the surface of Penros VII, and renewed talks of the possibility of escalation by the Gue'la Imperium in the region could now push the expeditionary mission to its breaking point..
(Neat slim white contrails arc across a cloudless midday sky across open rolling countryside)
Varrier (VO Cont.): .. Meanwhile on Penros VII coalition ground forces have shifted to a more aggressive posture..
(Rolling wilderness rushes past the underside of a Barracuda tearing along at low level. The Barracuda's central missile bay drops down and a pair of burning orange lights leap from the front of it one after the other before the Barracuda wrenches upwards and away from the world)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. with missile and airstrikes intensifying around known Ores'la strongholds..
(In the middle of a bustling Tau starport, beneath a cold blue-grey-orange dusk, Tau, humans and drones hastily unload cargo and supplies from the open cargo hatches of landed Manta and Orca dropships and onto rows of Tau grav-tanks and troop carriers under the illumination of floodlights)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. and reports of large numbers of Tau reserve units being mobilised..
(An orderly column of Tau vehicles screened by drones moves past the view down a desolate countryside roadway)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. in preparation for what is anticipated to be a major offensive operation in the coming weeks..
(Viewed in monochrome through a Tau docking camera, the vast ruined shell of an Explorer class starship stretches in all directions as far as the eye can see, slowly growing closer and closer)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. Salvaging operations are also underway to restore the derelict Gal'leath starship lost in combat operations to restore key fleet capabilities..
(Humans clad in Tau body armour and undersuit clothing swarm along a length of shattered, ruined Tau starship corridor, pulling battered Tau Air Caste from wreckage, working to repair the cataclysmic damage and moving loaded casualty grav-stretchers back out of view and fresh supplies and equipment out from view to where it's needed)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. while the coalition awaits the arrival of additional reinforcements. It's now a race against time for the Penros Coalition to shore up its operational situation, but there remains a sense among Coalition Command that this conflict, is not yet over. From Penros System this is Farrier Seyburey, Tor'Vash'Por.
Idris: Imperial authorities on Lysander have launched a brutal crackdown on civilian protestors calling for more equitable living conditions as well as diplomatic and trade ties with the Tau and Gue'vesa Federation. The demonstrators, only one day after their first mass action have been met with lethal force from local Arbite police units with the death toll currently at...
Back before the plague, before the tech bros, before the red caps and the boss babes, back when we were all wandering the face of the earth wondering what to do, a whole world full of lost little children.
I was driving that night way out past those hills on the horizon there. Those hills are a funny place I tell you what. Some folk say there's something in them, something old and strange that calls to men, draws them off their path. The stats sure back it up, the crash rate along those roads is crazy. I've seen more than a few cars off the road in my travels round there and the way they looked, the way they had crossed past the barrier and over the side, the way they had come to their final rest, like a faithful horse carrying its rider to the very end, something just so damn uncanny specific about those wrecks when I seen 'em, well...
... well I just can't help but think about those stories.
And after that night, well...
It was late, coming up to midnight. I had gone out for a cruise, to clear my head I suppose. I needed to get away, to run away, to fly away, to run to the edge of the world and never look back. I wanted to put my past as far away behind me as I could, and I had kept it in the rear view mirror at 80ks an hour since the sun had started painting the world one colour at a time. I had gone to the edge of the road, right to the sea, and since I had a car not a boat, that meant the end of the line. Only trouble was, I had done such a good job of outrunning my demons, I couldn't remember the way back.
And it's the damndest thing, no matter how sure I was that I was turning back towards home, I kept ending up further and further into the hills. I tell you, those hills out there are funny things, they like to play tricks on you at night.
The car's clock was coming up on 3AM by the time I got out of the hills, and I was a long way off the main roads. I decided to pull over and check the map to see if I could get a bearing.
That was when I saw the school.
I had come to a stop across the road from it, that desolate archipelago of buildings rising from the endless open countryside, still and empty and gaping like a dollhouse for giants. I had just turned the engine off when the moon caught the sign outside, a blazon of bright flowers and shiny blue ocean as vivid and colourful as the day it was first painted. It's funny how signs can outlast their buildings like that. The school itself, well I have to say I don't think that place had been teaching kids for years.
Maybe it never did.
The buildings seemed to huddle and grow close as I glanced across them. Their windows were still and black, their timbers blue in the forsaken night, but I swear in that moment my appreciation over the place weren't a two-way street. I looked into that deserted lost place, and it looked straight back at me with those gaping black holes of windows.
And then I noticed the library.
It was the biggest building, in the centre of the huddle. When I looked hard enough I could just make out the rows of bookshelves through its windows, a tiny other world at the end of a long dark tunnel.
Why did I think there would be anything valuable in there? I don't know. Maybe I just couldn't leave a stone unturned if there was a chance a treasure of forgotten lore was under it. Maybe I wanted to believe I could escape back to that island of time when I could lose myself in the picture books in my old school library, paint whole worlds from just the pages, and live a whole afternoon in them without a care in the world.
All I know is I locked the car behind me, dashed the road and jumped the chain at what used to be the gate.
It was a wild night that night. The wind roared across the fields, clouds swam before the wheeling stars. But as I got closer to that place, everything got dead quiet. Even the wind seemed to leave it well enough alone.
Maybe once that school had been a kind place, with its rows of white buildings. But the flowers painted on the walls had faded to a bone-like pallor, and one or two of the classrooms sat with their white painted walls clawed and mangled with deep dark scorching, the charred blackness behind their windows almost still smoldering to the eye. Through one window rows of desks stood with chairs neatly folded up, another they sat open before the desks as if in anticipation. A handprint sat in the corner of one window, a tiny footnote of darkness upon the darkness behind it.
The only thing that moved besides me were a pair of swings on the far side of the concrete lake these islands of wood and darkness were set upon, twisting and rocking without a sound. There wasn't a damn noise in all the world as I walked through that place.
Just the sense that something bad had happened here a long long time ago.
The door to the library threw itself open with a crash that split the night like a meteor. Rust crept around its lock and hinges like mould. I made for the vast towering maw of darkness that lay beyond, daring it to swallow me before the future did. If the noise of the world was timid around the school, the light was just as meek inside it. It was only after a minute of careful, purposeful snaking through black upon black that I was finally able to make the open inner doorway, and that cold barren maze of shelves beyond. I pressed through, past shelves of glossy hardcovers and tattered shambles of desecrated pages.
And then right at the heart of that damn room I'll never forget what I saw.
As soon as I laid eyes upon it the door smashed shut with another cleaving thunderclap. All at once the back of my head burned with anticipation, like a thousand eyes were staring down on me, judging me for ever daring to trespass that god-forsaken ruin that claimed them as their home forever. My own heart was silent. My own head was silent. My own soul was silent. The darkness smothered like water overhead.
That was when I heard the yowl.
A howling preening cry that cut through the suffocating silence like a sword. I wrenched my head to where it came from, a cat on the open window, its shapely tail curling up and back and beckoning me to where I was before. I needed no further invitation. I bolted for the window, not squandering a second to look back. The beast turned and leapt as I reached it, lunging behind me in an arrow of fuzzy darkness and brilliant iridescent eyes that shone like gold. I threw myself out the opening and ran, ran until my chest screamed and my hands hit familiar metal and glass.
I got in the car and drove like the wind, until I glanced that darting serpentine shape of paws and ears and arrow-straight tail bolt right across the edge of my lights. I turned after it at the next intersection and as the moon broke through again I finally found myself coming towards the marching army of lights that cordoned the motorway.
But I'll never forget what I saw that night in the heart of that damn room.
It looked like this.
Oh. OHHHHHHH! Oh I finally get it now! It's supposed to be a chained up tome of evil! All these years I thought the cover was just some kind of chain-gimp fetish shoutout
Ever since first learning of its existence I've tried very hard to understand and appreciate Wraith: The Oblivion. Its reputation as being the ultimate apotheosis of edgy grimdark, the shining jeweled cherry of pure distilled edgy grimdark misery on top of the already mountainous sundae of edgy grimdark drenched with hot edgy grimdark misery sauce that is the Old World of Darkness, has intrigued me because being already familiar with both Warhammer 40,000 and the golden child of the OWOD Vampire: The Masquerade, the idea of there being a tabletop game even more grimdark than those two is something I just have to see for myself - I'm fascinated by Kult for very similar reasons.
Of course, the other big drive behind my fascination with Wraith is its other reputation as the neglected spat-upon Zoidberg of the OWOD, and as something of a Zoidberg myself I cannot help but naturally relate to such a product. One does not spend 15 years as a Tau player in online 40k fan spaces without developing at least a little empathy for a good outcast no-one likes (it's either that or internalise the hatred and become one of those Tau players that's not like Those Other Girls Tau fans)
Unfortunately, for a long time no matter how hard I tried I just fundamentally did not get Wraith. The trouble was that its dense world of Shadowlands and Stygia and Acranoi and a million billion assorted eternal realms of afterlife was all just noise to me, a sea of bizarre concepts that I just fundamentally could not get my head around enough to fully care about.
And I suspect that's one of Wraith's biggest problems. At least when it comes to cultivating an audience and being successful.
It's telling that until very recently the game's biggest moment in the spotlight, the time where it came closest to reaching a mass audience, was in one of the best sequences of the video game Bloodlines... that did not even bother to so much as mention a single thing about Wraith's background worldbuilding and instead focused down on classic ghost story staples with laser precision to masterful effect.
What's also telling is the breakthrough that finally managed to pierce the cloud and start bridging the gap between me and Wraith. It was many years after I had first learned of Wraith, and I was revisiting the TVtropes page for the game in some idle web-browsing when I came across this buried gem:
It's possible to permanently yield some power to your Shadow in order to reenter your body and become one of the Risen until you take care of some unfinished business. Yup; you become The Crow.
Now THAT, that right there. THAT, is a concept. That is something I could comprehend having fun with. The stuff about a million billion afterlife realms and cliques politicking in them and also apparently all the stuff is made out of other ghosts now for some reason? That was all still largely illegible alien nerd gibberish to rival the Voynich Manuscript, but "You get to play as The Crow in the OWOD" was a concept with serious potential.
And it was an angle that stuck with me just long enough to remember it right when I needed it most.
It was 2020, and the climactic final act of the Vampire adventure that remains my magnum opus as a GM was coming up to high gear. In the sexy glitzy nights of central San Francisco, my PCs had just rescued an important personal friend of the local Tremere coven and an expert in ritual enchantments. In doing so they had finally learnt of the presence of a hard-as-nails veteran vampire hunter, hot on the trail of the defecting Sabbat VIP the PCs had been tasked with guarding and now packing an arsenal of custom tailor-enchanted anti-vampire stakes that she had forced the aforementioned Tremere hostage to make for her.
(and as it turned out, also the daughter of the Final Girl that helped the Gangrel PC take down a Tzimisce operation back in the day)
One brief car-motorcycle chase later, and two of the PCs had managed to narrowly apprehend said vampire hunter and get her unconscious ass back to their hideout. Between the difficulty in actually apprehending her and a cursory examination of the absolute arsenals found in the two duffel-bags on her person, the PCs quickly came to the (correct) conclusion that Ghouling her would make a formidable ally.
Unfortunately the attempt to make a Ghoul out of her fell through when two sets of character prime directives violently collided with each other. See, the PC who had taken on the Ghouling plan as a pet project had this whole thing about only ever turning people into Ghouls and Vampires with consent ("I'm going to give you the choice I never had"), but what the players did not know was that Ms Vampire Hunter had her own whole thing about not becoming the very monsters she hunts at all costs. The resulting impasse might have been resolved with a sufficiently impressive feat of persuasion (which I was actually low-key rooting for the PCs to pull off), but the PC was the party's muscle and very much a fighter not a lover, and for whatever reason the player behind him never thought to break out and switch over to the much more socially inclined Ghoul they already had at their disposal (which I was actually low-key rooting for them to do), so the impasse was ultimately only resolved with terminal neck trauma.
Yet it was not the end. The almighty puppeteer god that ruled over their world from behind the shadows was not yet ready to let go of such a promising NPC. Not least because it would make the job of putting together more session content easier if a few more sessions could be squeezed out of her.
And it was in exploring ways to salvage the character that I remembered that little line from the TVtropes page, and the concept of Risen in the OWOD. It seemed like the perfect solution, so I went over to the White Wolf Wiki to at least get a cliff-notes understanding of what Risen were and how they work.
And that was how I discovered the next big breakthrough with Wraith.
See, it turns out that one of the special things Risen get access to is a couple of unique sets of powers. One of those unique lists of powers is called Serendipity, and the Wiki describes it as having power over coincidences that a Risen can use to-
Wait.
Hold up.
Wait.
Wait wait.
Wait hold up.
Wait hold up here a minute.
Lemme just.
Lemme just backtrack a little there and..
Those who master Serendipity can make coincidences work in their favor.
Make coincidences work in their favour.
The power of coincidence.
Coincidence.
Coincidence, random chance.
Random chance, coincidence.
Like in Final Destination.
The power of coincidence, like in Final Destination.
Wait.
Wait wait wait wait wait.
Hold the fuck up here a minute.
Just hold the fuck up here a minute White Wolf.
You're telling me, White Wolf, that in this Wraith game of yours, this whole time, I could have been going fucking full Final Destination on motherfuckers?
Holy FUCK White Wolf! Why in god's name did younot open with that? That's the most metal thing I've heard all month! That's rock as hell! Fucking sign me up right there, that's the sale of the century! Bringing back this badass Vampire hunter as pissed off revenant with motherfucking Final Destination powers is exactly the kind of cool fun out of leftside challenge for my PCs I'm looking for! I can have ALL kinds of fun with that concept!
Right that settles it, we're breaking out this Wraith stuff, we're making this girl a Risen and we're going to be busting out ALL the Final Destination powers, here we go, it's gonna be wild, it's gonna be rad, crank up that Within Temptation and lesh go!
Alright here we go, I'm all fired up on Within Temptation, I'm feeling this in my bones, I am READY for these Final Destination powers, come on White Wolf hit me with every one of these Serendipity powers you got! Let's do this! Here we go!
Oh.
Oh.
What the HELL White Wolf. How the HELL do you screw up Final Destination powers? I was promised an arsenal of kickass Final Destination powers and instead you give me a bunch of pissy little fee-fee kumbaya kombucha rubbish? What the hell am I supposed to do with any of this! I'm trying to make a paranormal supernatural horror story here not start a bible group!
Just, just just go. Just get out of here White Wolf, just get the hell out of here. Go sit in the corner with Marmite, you deserve each other. This is why no-one likes you.
So needless to say I almost immediately threw all the stuff on the wiki page out the window and exercised my awesome omnipotent might as GM to come up with some real Final Destination powers instead. And it was awesome.
My point here is that this whole story is illustrative of Wraith's big framing problem and what I believe has held Wraith back from finding the same kind of success that Vampire did - Deep inside Wraith: The Oblivion is a mass of potential for a truly brilliant game, but it's hideously mismanaged and buried under 700 tons of clomping nerd bullshit for nerds, and the clomping nerd bullshit is placed front and centre as the star attraction which is the Tabletop Game marketing equivalent of going to a first date with a girl and then immediately asking her for graphic lewd descriptions of her feet and what they can do- it's the sort of thing you have to work up towards.
That's not to say that this is all Wraith's fault specifically. The exact same problem plagues just about every single OWOD game that's not Vampire: The Masquerade, to varying extents, and again is a not insignificant factor in why none of them have ever really been able to replicate the same level of success and popularity that Vampire did. They all have this bad habit of trying way the hell too hard to make themselves their own distinct unique OC Do Not Steal IP, and in doing so they all end up overthinking everything and becoming dense and out there, and thus off-putting to a lot of people who would otherwise probably quite like their concepts.
In contrast, Vampire never tried to be its own distinct unique completely original IP. It got there by accident while trying to be the ultimate general purpose vampire RPG. And when it comes to drawing in a big audience, that general purpose nature is a very powerful advantage. Being a general-purpose genre melting pot is a very effective survival strategy for a work of fiction, because leveraging existing familiarity allows preceding works to do half the work for you in priming people to like your content. If you've already grown up with westerns, adventure pulp, knight and samurai fantasy and war movies, then you're already primed to understand and like Star Wars. If you've grown up with 20th century sci fi like Aliens, Star Trek, Star Wars and so on, then you're already primed to understand and like Starcraft.
And it's fundamentally the same with Vampire: The Masquerade. You're not playing in minutiae of fancy edgy goffik latinicus words, you're playing with sexy vampires. Or classic aristocratic vampires. Or classic hissing Orlock style vampires. You start by picking a classic vampire archetype and working out from there, and all the fancy gothic names are just window dressing that's mostly there as lawsuit repellant. And it works because if you're looking at Vampire: The Masquerade then you've probably already been weaned on a steady diet of Buffy, Anne Rice, Blade and Bram Stoker Francis Ford Coppola and know exactly what to expect and exactly what you're here for going in.
With the other OWOD titles? Not so much. With them, the out-there OC IP is the central framework, and there's not really the same kind of ready-made onramp.
In a lot of cases this is due to being victims of circumstance, in particular bad timing preventing them from piggy-backing off the cultural zeitgeist. Mage: The Ascension and Hunter: The Reckoning both suffer badly from this rotten luck - the former coming out three years too early to ride the Craft to Charmed Wicca pipeline, and the latter coming out six years too early to ride the Supernatural wave. And I suspect in both cases they were somewhat forced to improvise something to fill the gap, and resorted to doing so with varying degrees of clomping nerd bullshit that is often just really Out There man. Vampire, in contrast, was blessed to come out at just about the perfect time to be able to pick up on the experimental Lost Boys - Fright Night era of vampires and then slingshot off the Sexy Vampire Renaissance of the 90s, and thus never needed to try that hard.
And that's not to say that really Out There niche stuff can't be good - the cult followings a lot of the non-Vampire OWOD titles have cobbled together is proof that people clearly do get invested in it - but it is going to have a lower ceiling on just how popular and successful the IP can get. As the old adage goes, not everybody drinks wine, but everybody drinks water.
And this whole issue is probably most visible with Wraith, and most tragic because, when you dig down to that bedrock, Wraith is actually weirdly just about in the best possible place to replicate Vampire's success with the same survival strategy.
It's not something you notice often, but when you sit down and really look at things, there's almost as many classic ghost stories in popular culture as there are vampire stories, and unlike the vampire stories, a lot more of those ghost stories actually centre ghosts themselves as protagonists. That means you don't even need to work as hard blending in out-of-subgenre elements.
Those pop-culture influences are already enough to build a cool fun OWOD Wraith game off of. You don't need reams and reams of nonsense metacosmic spirit world politics, you don't even need a spirit world (seriously, why did White Wolf start confining their OWOD games to weird otherrealms?). You can just set players down and say "Alright, you're all ghosts, you have unfinished business in this life and there's some bad guys over there. Go Final Destination some motherfuckers. Go Beetlejuice the fuck out of them." and have a compelling fun game doing that.
Because again, that's what Vampire: The Masquarade does, just with vampire pop culture.
What do players do each night, you might ask? Well that's a great question, and the other great strength of Wraith is that it already has a really good solid answer for that too - just, again, buried under 700 tons of clomping nerd bullshit.
The players try to transcend.
It's been pointed out by some that Wraith for all its grimdark moping is ironically one of the most optimistic OWOD games because the ghostly ambition of resolving all the remaining lose ends tying them back and moving on to a better genuinely blissful afterlife is a goal that's actually viable in gameplay - you can practically achieve that over an adventure, in a way that you just can't with something like, say, riding yourself of the dark unholy thirst of the beast in Vampire.
I'm compelled to agree, but I would go a step even further. That goal right there is on its own a perfect organic core story hook for you to base RPG sessions off of. That, right there, is the answer to the eternal question, as a wise blogger long ago once put it, of "what shall we do tonight Brain?"
You try to work through your remaining life baggage so you can transcend to a final blissful existence. When in doubt, start exploring memories.
Because ghosts, fundamentally, are MEMORIES. That's all a ghost is, a memory with an attitude and agency. That's why they're always tied to haunted places and objects, because that's how memories work - a thing or a place or a time reminds you of the memory. It's also why you can be haunted even by ghosts of people who aren't even dead, like when you're haunted by memories of an ex-girlfriend around an old anniversary.
Someone on the Wraith team seemed to get this, because there's a good solid infrastructure in place already for that with all the fetters and tethers and such, but again, it's mismanaged and used as a footrest for 700 tons of unnecessary clomping nerd bullshit.
Baddies you say? Well we'll get to those in the companion piece to this one. Oh yes, don't you worry about that, I have big plans all about playing stone-cold baddies galore.
Oh wait, you mean bad guys, antagonists to fight?
Ah well yes they're important too. We need someone to use those rocking Final Destination powers on. But I'm still not convinced you need a dark cosmic primordial evil with an army of evil spirits for that. After all, Vampire: The Masquerade - remember, the most popular OWOD game by a fair margin - does just fine without all that. In that one the bad guys are just a combination of antagonistic humans in your way and other vampires that are even worse than you and don't even pretend to care about humans or humanity. And that works. That 'hell is other people' concept works just fine, you don't need to go dragging in cosmological dark lords to justify it.
And I feel like that formula would work much better for Wraith. Forget Oblivion and Spectres and all that, the bad guys in your way are just antagonistic humans and bad ghosts - no big cosmological reason why they're bad, they were just assholes in life and now they're assholes in death. People do be like that sometimes. Now go, get out there and Final Destination those motherfuckers. Go Beetlejuice the fuck out of them.
See taking those kinds of antagonists, combining them with the core gameplay loop of exploring memories and resolving the loose ends holding your ghosts back from moving on, and a framework of classic ghost stories, produces a really focused, compelling tabletop RPG, with a focus on personal stakes and storytelling. No it doesn't have any grand sweeping cosmological battle of good and evil, but that's OK not every OWOD game needs one of those. In fact quite a few of them would probably be better off without it. You can have a fun cool and compelling game about a bunch of ghosts trapped in the real world (well the OWOD real world) cleaning up their memory baggage so they can move on to the better place they're supposed to be. With awesome Final Destination powers.
And that, is what would make a Wraith game work for me at least.
Cultural Touchstones
So what are the pop culture touchstones that White Would should be drawing on for Wraith? What classic ghost stories should be the basis for its DNA? Well looking through my wall of VHS tapes, these for starters.
Final Destination - the reference that started it all. Raving about how excellent a source for game powers the film is, it's also a really really great classic example of a ghost story, at least of sorts. Final Destination is ultimately a classic ghost story without the ghost, with the characters instead being haunted by death itself. If you're wanting a good classic touchstone for what it's like to be haunted, this one is an excellent first pick.
The Frighteners - gotta support the home team! As well as being a criminally underrated gem in its own right, The Frighteners is a great example of a ghost story with ghosts as... well not really protagonists but deuteragonists or deutragonist-adjacent at least. The dynamics between the main characters also give a good suggestion for what an ensemble party of ghost PCs might look something like, and while the surface design and concept of the antagonist is similar to what I think they were aiming for with the Spectres in the old game, the ultimate twist about the antagonist is a perfect example of the "hell is other people" type of antagonists that a good fresh Wraith game really should be focusing on more.
Beetlejuice - it just wouldn't be a list of classic ghost pop culture without Tim Burton's magnum opus (yeah die mad about it old Batman fans) somewhere near the top. Beetlejuice, in case you are not familiar, is a tragic tale of achieving the ultimate pinnacle of the highest heaven, being cloistered up in your hobby room for all eternity with a 32 year old Geena Davis who utterly loves you, only to then have it all agonisingly ripped away by a couple of obnoxious yuppies and an immature edgelord who is summoned with the invocation "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" (repeating it also sends him back). Oh and Winona Ryder is there too.
But I digress. The key thing about Beetlejuice, and what makes it such a key ingredient in what Wraith should be aiming for as a ghost RPG, is that Beetlejuice is probably the classic modern ghost story that's actually centred around ghosts. The protagonists are ghosts, one of the main antagonists is a ghost, and the central focus of the story is about ghosts navigating and adjusting to life after life. That makes it perfect bedrock to build a ghost-focused RPG on.
I suspect this might be another case of someone on the Wraith team having the right idea, because I suspect that a lot of the nerd baggage in the game came about as an attempt to riff on the afterlife politics that also crop up in this film. But if that's the case then they also sort of missed the point completely, because the story here isn't about the afterlife politics, the story is about two newly ghostified people trying to make sense of their new existence and find their new place in the world. And that is exactly the sort of story that Wraith should really be focusing on. The rest is just garnish.
Oh and there's also lots of rich inspiration for alternative powers to Final Destination too.
Ghost - OK so there's two classic quintessential ghost stories centred on ghost as protagonist, and I need to throw in both of them if I want to avoid having my pop culture guru license revoked. But that's OK because I was going to do it anyway. Ghost is of course THE classic ghost movie, it is for ghost stories what Dracula and Interview are for vampire stories, but it's also EXACTLY the sort of personal stakes, personal-level story about exploring memory and tying up loose life baggage in order to ascend to the right place that should be Wraith's bread-and-butter. Give me a game where I play out something like this, and your game will be very popular and successful.
Corpse Bride - Yet another ghost story with a ghost as deutragonist sort-of, and a focus on ghost characters navigating unresolved life baggage. A lot of what applies to the other entries above also applies here. It's almost like there's a common creative influence it shares between one of the others...
Thirteen Ghosts - while the other entries on here are all strong ingredients for what Wraith's story focus should be, this one is a key ingredient for what Wraith's aesthetic and visual design ought to be taking cues from. The story of the film itself is transparently threadbare and largely just an excuse to get characters exposed to freaky visuals, but those visuals themselves are on point. The look, design and character backstories of the titular ghosts are what has carried this film since its release, and are exactly the sort of place to look for when working out what Wraith characters might look like. Heck take the titular 13 ghosts from this film and you've already got a pretty respectable gallery of Wraith NPCs and/or pre-built PCs right there.
Ghosts - rounding out the core lineup is this fun little gem of a TV show, as a good example of how ensembles of ghost characters can work over a serialised arc not dissimilar to the average RPG adventure, all delightfully framed by the charming charisma and dynamic magnetism of star actor Rose McIver who is a treasure to watch and a credit to every production she's in.
Oh and there's also some obscure UK derivative of the show too I think. I suppose that's probably worth a watch too.
Ghost Chips - Again, gotta support the home team!
An astute observer will probably have noticed one recurring pattern across all these titles. None of them have the same sort of roof-top leather katana fighting action of Vampire, nor do they have the low-down gritty blue-collar brawling action of, say, Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The basis for a white-knuckled action game this is not. But that's OK, because not every OWOD game has to be like that, and in some cases it's a mistake for every OWOD game to try to be. It's OK to just be a personal game about personal character stories with personal character stakes.
There's room in the OWOD for that.
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And hey, if you act now, you get a free golden new game concept with every critique! Ah now you can't beat that can you.
And bring the lil' parts down here! Hell we got plenty of snakes an' lizards for 'em to play with, there's no problem with that at all!
I was only in primary school when I first became aware of the existence of Charmed, the unhinged lunatic spiritual sister-series to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. For a long time my entire exposure to it was in the television ads that made their way to me while I was watching other shows, but as the years went by I became increasingly intrigued by this strange mysterious show about three sisters fighting demons or wizards or something. This was not least because by that point I was starting to experience strange funny feelings around girls, and the show featured Rose McGowan in a lot of slinky outfits.
And then, just like that, it was gone. The show ran its course, vanished from broadcast, and the ads vanished with it, and I turned to other more pressing interests, leaving the strange mysterious sister magic show to fade from memory.
From time to time over high school I was reminded of it when I came into contact with goth girls who were fond of the show, and from there I was able to piece together what Charmed was actually supposed to be about - a Buffy-style paranormal drama about 3-4 witches who fought demons and/or evil wizards with magic, with a lot of melodrama ensuring. So far so good, but my attention for supernatural drama quickly became dominated by Buffy, Angel and Supernatural, leaving Charmed to once again fall by the wayside.
Then just recently I finally got around to reconnecting with and finishing watching through Allison Pregler's acclaimed chronicle of the life and times of Charmed, which currently stands at twelve volumes and a little over 11 hours of footage. I discovered much along that journey, learning of the tortured history of the show both in and out of its universe, and I can understand both why it never reached the same heights as Buffy and why the goth girls I knew in high school still loved it dearly all the same.
But most of all, my single biggest impression was of just how fundamentally, quintessentially OWOD the whole thing was. The more I saw of it, the more I kept thinking "Oh my god! This is SO OWOD! This is just like the OWOD! That is EXACTLY the sort of thing that you would expect from the OWOD!"
(and also the accompanying thought, "These characters could be a lot of fun to roleplay in an OWOD environment")
And the more I thought about that the more another thought began to slowly creep in - wait a minute, why isn't this in the OWOD? Sure Charmed might have never been a tremendous cultural phenomenon, but it did still have enough traction to net 8 seasons, 2 comic book sequels and enough of a cult following to warrant a reboot 10 years later. And it came off the tail of The Craft and a general undercurrent of fascination with all things wicca by the new age and goth movements in the 1990s. That sounds like exactly the sort of thing that White Wolf would have tried to cash in on with an OWOD game about cool sexy gothic witches hanging out in covens and getting into melodrama and fighting stuff with magic and riding around on Ducati motorcycles wearing slinky leather outfits.
Yet it was nowhere to be found.
Going through the various OWOD game lines I could think of, not a single one of them matched that description. But wait! That's right, wasn't there that one OWOD game about magic and shit? Surely that one would have to have a big thing all about cool sexy witches getting into antics, after all, it was an OWOD game about magic and magic practitioners in the wicca-flavoured era of the 90s. I remembered discovering that one a long time ago and then promptly writing it off when the masses of dense nerd baggage it presented me with made my brain hurt, but maybe I had been too hasty in writing it off completely. Maybe it was worth another look.
So I opened up TVtropes and the White Wolf Wiki for some cursory research, and sure enough.... well.... I mean there was sort of kind of something like that in Mage: The Ascension, if you squinted... but it was still buried under 500 tons of nerd baggage about weird cyberpunk tesla magitek civil war stuff that still made my head hurt reading about it.
So that leaves with a roughly Charmed shaped niche, almost completely unoccupied, with Mage partially covering it from one side, and Vampire: The Masquerade's Tremere partially covering a little bit of if from another end, but in both cases with a bunch of superfluous hoops to jump through and a focus on other dense nerd baggage, and neither one really being a peg that conforms to the hole well enough to scratch the Charmed But Make It OWOD itch perfectly.
And that, then, is why I not-so-secretly yearn for a hard reboot of Mage: The Ascension that burns down "the lore" to make room for an additional new game fully rooted in a bedrock of wicca fantasy with a focus on playing out Charmed grade melodrama among witch covens in the OWOD. Look I'm sorry Mage fans, but it doesn't matter how hard you try to push it on me, at the end of the day I just can't get into Cyberpunk Magitech Civil War. That concept just does not make my brain go brrr on a fundamental level.
But you know what does make my brain go brrr? What makes my brain brrrr hard? That's right, Charmed but Make It OWOD. Give me a game where I'm a sexy petty vindictive high-drama witch with phenomenal cosmic power, hanging out in a coven of other sexy petty vindictive high-drama witches with phenomenal cosmic power, getting into all kinds of wild soap opera shenanigans with vampires and werewolves and mortals over demon hexes and mimosas, and I am fucking there. THAT, that right there, is my idea of a good time tabletop RPGing. THAT, is a premise with potential. THAT, would be an OWOD game that works for me.
What. Don't look at me like that. We all know perfectly well that wild trashy soapy melodrama is the lifeblood of the OWOD. The OWOD runs on wild trashy soapy melodrama. We're ALL here sliving for the wild trashy soapy supernatural melodrama, I'm just man enough to be honest about it.
And given how much of a cult following Charmed and The Craft both have, enough that the CW tried to revive Charmed despite the infamy surrounding it, I feel confident in saying I'm not the only one out there who feels that way. I have zero doubt that there is a viable audience for that. I have every confidence that the premise I just pitched, a well-made storytelling game of demon hexes and mimosas, would sell like wildfire with the right marketing.
I mean, just look at that tagline right there - A storytelling game of demon hexes and mimosas. That is a world-class tagline right there. The game almost writes itself from that tagline. Throw in some fun sexy artwork along that vibe and you're away with the races.
The trick, of course, is that it would sell like wildfire among a completely different audience to what White Wolf has traditionally targeted. It's very obviously NOT going to sell like wildfire amongst your archetypal old-school 90s 'hArDcOrE' nerd RPG Gamur type, the sort of archetypal basement rocker who plays D&D to punch dragons in the face as an axe-waving barbarian and reacts to mimosa nights like a vampire to a church. That sort is obviously the sort that is much more likely to appreciate some industrial edgy cyberpunk magitech civil war premise instead, which is why the Mage game we got did so well with them. I am aware that as far as archetypal old-school 90s hardcore nerds go, I am in the minority in this regard.
But here's the thing. You don't have to pitch or sell all your tabletop games to that one demographic. There are other demographics you can make tabletop games for instead, especially in this post-Gamergate, post-nerd culture world, and those other demographics pay just as well as the traditional nerds do.
And this is important because marketing some tabletop games to those other demographics is an awesome way to grow your revenue, since it taps into streams of money that aren't already going into your coffers. If you make Wicca: The Craft, a storytelling game of Demon Hexes and Mimosas, those old-school nerds are still going to buy Vampire: The Masquerade and have fun chopping bad guys to bits with katanas while wearing sunglasses in it. The difference is that now in that hypothetical, you have the old-school nerds pouring money into your game company AND a whole new audience of goth girls also pouring money into your game company, leaving you with double the money streams and thus double the cha-ching-a-ling-ling.
Yes, yes, I know that Vampire's primary audience is already 50-60% comprised of goth girls. The actual breakdown of this hypothetical demon hexes and mimosas game's core audience would probably be a similar sort of intersection of goth and LGBTQ as the one which fuels the Rocky Horror phenomenon. But my point here is that making different OWOD games to different and diverse audiences is not necessarily a bad idea. It's not going to cost White Wolf or whoever any serious loss in revenue, and actually has the potential to net them a whole lot more revenue overall.
And also that Wicca: The Craft, a storytelling game of Demon Hexes and Mimosas is a million dollar concept premise for a tabletop RPG with serious legs.
It also fits in amongst the other OWOD games as a perfect little antidote for all the unrelenting grimdark misery that goes on in those lines. Had enough unrelenting misery and despair playing Vampire? Just break out Wicca: The Craft, a storytelling game of Demon Hexes and Mimosas enjoy a good bit of free sexy lighthearted fun playing Mean Girls with black magic. Then, when you've had your fun there and you're ready for more heavier stuff, break out Wraith or Werewolf or Hunter or something instead.
It works on so many levels.
Now, I know what you're thinking right now - "But Millitant, all the best OWOD games have some kind of solid core gameplay loop based on the nature of their supernatural protagonists and what motivates them, what are these sexy witch characters going to do each night?" Well my brainworms around this concept are a step ahead of you right there! Try this one out for size:
Witches want to keep their sisterhood together against a world constantly trying to tear them apart.
Not bad huh! Yes sure OK it's almost certainly a little bit very rough and unpolished but hey, it's a first outline scribbled down on a napkin straight off the top of my head from pure brainworm energy alone. As a starting point, I'd say it's not too shabby at all. At the bottom line your characters in Wicca: The Craft are trying to keep together as a sisterhood in the face of a world constantly pulling them apart with various temptations and dangers. That's the common goal they're all trying to achieve.
What are those temptations and dangers you might ask? Well the exact specifics would be up to the GM, picking from a broad range of heart-throbs, exes, life opportunities, dickbags, rivals, rival covens, demons, evil wizards, vampires, ghosts, werewolves, monster hunters and so on. You know, the sort of dangers that haunt the OWOD every night plus the sort of temptations people get exposed to every night in most worlds. I guess you could maybe throw in some sort of league of evil witches too, but I'm not sure it's strictly necessary - if you're really in need of a big overarching cosmic doom for your cool sexy witches to fight against then you're already pretty spoiled for choice with any one of the dozen or so big overarching cosmic dooms that already populate the OWOD. Besides, the focus here is really supposed to be on the more personal melodrama side of things. Personal character-driven stakes. Remember, this is supposed to be a storytelling game of demon hexes and mimosas after all.
Core concepts? Well I think the one I'd want front and centre on everyone's minds the most is 'Sisterhood'. That's usually the keystone theme in the source material, and the magic in the source material is always fueled by coordination and cooperation amongst a sisterhood - there's always a Power Of Three or a Four Element Ensemble thing going on. I like the idea of certain dice pools changing depending on party character relationships, to really hammer home the collective sisterhood spirit and really incentivise players to fully explore and have fun with inter-character dynamics.
Maybe even have certain dice pools be transferrable, with players able to lend each other extra dice for certain things depending on the relationship between their characters. Maybe with some risks and consequences for holding onto too many dice for too long (dangerous to hoard too much magic power up for one's own selfish whims you see), just as a failsafe to make sure no-one gets too greedy.
Speaking of dice, I'm liking the classic V5 Vampire two-colour dice combination, but obviously witches are not vampires and I'm feeling a different sort of duality in the dice pools would be required, with negative dice being not so much strictly worse in the way that hunger dice are in Vampire, but more a case of different, with different opportunities and consequences attached. The idea here is based on the whole classic sort of 'no light without darkness' magic concept where the two sides are a sort of yin-yang duality to be explored, balanced and harmonised rather than mitigated and contained like vampiric hunger.
Now exactly what that would look like in game mechanics terms, well that's one area that's still a bit of an open question. Maybe one colour of dice is more consistent, more safe, while the other colour is more high-risk/high-reward. I dunno, I don't have all the specifics ironed out here yet. There's only so much room on the back of this napkin before you start running into grease blotches.
Well, I think it's a pretty fun concept anyway. And that it's enjoyed rent-free living in my head all week is a sign that it's got some kind of potential at least. I think there's room there in the OWOD for something like it, a place of hellspawn and heartbreak, of lamassu and lip gloss, of ghouls and glitter. The place where the falling Violet Orlandi meets the rising Sabrina Carpenter.
A place of demon hexes and mimosas. You know, in addition to the tesla cyberpunk magitech civil war.
Idris: ... Good evening welcome back to Tor'Vash'Por, I'm Idris Zhaan joining you now at the top of the hour. We begin with our top story tonight in the Penros system where Tau warships have engaged several pirate spacecraft above Penros VI. The action marks the first large scale space combat by Tau expeditionary forces in the system and represents a major escalation of the Penros conflict, our correspondent Farrier Seyburey has more now.
(The cool white armoured prow of a Hero class starship sprawls across the bottom of view, arcing out towards an endless field of stars, with a massive rectangular gun barrel stretching into the cosmos even further)
Farrier (VO): The day the Tau coalition always knew would come...
(The enormous gun fires in total noiselessness at some unseen target. As it does the stars in the distance ahead twist and swirl inwards towards the front of the ship, stretching out as the universe scrunches towards the gun muzzle. Almost immediately after the gun fires the starscape swims back to its normal state)
Farrier (VO cont.): ... the Penros Coalition's first space combat.
(Inside a vast cavernous rectangular launch bay, a Manta laden with enormous underwing missile pods sits poised for takeoff. Tiny figures scatter away from it to their flight deck stations before the machine lurches into life and tears off past the camera in a tremendous rush of speed)
Farrier (VO Cont.): Tau fleet elements today undertaking routine anti-piracy operations in the vicinity of Penros VI came under attack from human warships under the command of Mont'au'Gue'la terrorist forces..
(Inside a vast cavernous rectangular launch bay, an SX-06 Barracuda with a bundle of missiles slung underneath races across the flight deck, roaring burning plumes of bright flame blasting from its engines, before rocketing off through the launch bay door and into deep space)
Farrier (VO Cont.): ..in what has become the first major space combat in the Penros System since the arrival of Tau expeditionary forces several weeks ago..
(The rear underside of a Manta sprawls across the top of view as we see a vast cavernous rectangular launch bay rapidly shoot back and downwards, followed by the vast launch bay entrance and enormous shape of an Explorer class starship falling into the distance as the Manta takes off and races away on its launch trajectory)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. The Tau flotilla, comprising of several escort ships and four capital starships including the expedition fleet's flagship, encountered six unidentified escort ships that refused to respond to hails and opened fire with torpedo strikes..
(Missile after missile after missile leaps upwards in a relentless stream of bright burning plumes of flame from a cluster of vertical launch cells on the massive flank of a Tau starship, which sprawls across the bottom of view and stretches into the distance)
Farrier (VO Cont.): ... The ships are believed to have been manned by Mont'au'Gue'la fighters belonging to one of the local terrorist groups active on Penros VII, but latest intelligence indicates a possible connection to the Word Bearers Gue'la terror group..
(Viewed in monochrome through a Tau weapon seeker, the distant shape of an Idolator class raider slowly begins to grow out from the centre of view, wiggling to and fro as the missile tracks to keep it in the centre of vision. A stream of flashes races forwards from the ship before sweeping up and over out of view. At once the Idolator rushes forward into the camera, zooming straight into a section of its hull before the image abruptly cuts)
Farrier (VO Cont.): ...While engaging the initial hostile ships the Tau formation came under attack from multiple capital warships of modified Imperial design, which materialised directly from warp space in support of the attacking Mont'au'Gue'la..
(Viewed in monochrome through a Tau gun camera, an Idolator class raider hangs in space, bright spheres of light radiating from its engines. A trio of small flashes zoom across the screen and straight into the middle of it. The ship is engulfed in a series of brilliant white flashes before snapping in half at the middle of the hull, a sea of glowing molten fragments spilling away from it in a fan pattern)
Farrier (VO Cont.): ..These ships made numerous small-scale etheric jumps over the course of the battle and Tau fleet analysts believe them to have been equipped with highly sophisticated warp drive and self-repair technology. Rumours that the warships were manned with or supplied by so-called etheric lifeforms remain unsubstantiated..
(A rugged stocky rocketship hangs in the middle of view as it hurtles through space at an oblique angle. Hideous dull red sigils are painted across its surface, and tiny lights can be seen from cabin windows aboard it. One by one, it slams into first one, then two then three passing cruise missiles, leaving a trail of debris pouring from gaping holes in its hull and cabins)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. The terrorist ships also made extensive use of manned suicide vehicles to intercept incoming Tau fire, succeeding in downing a large number of anti-ship missiles and tying up interceptor squadrons with an appalling loss of life. It is not yet known whether the suicide vehicles were carrying willing fighters, or civilian hostages forced into the line of death against their will..
(Viewed from above in monochrome through a Tau gun camera, an Idolater hangs in the void, silhouetted by spheres of light from its engines as it points away from view. A trio of small flashes zoom across the screen and into the port side of it. The ship is engulfed in a series of brilliant white flashes before spiraling out of control, breaking apart into a mess of debris and glowing molten fragments)
Farrier (VO Cont.): ..After a hard-fought engagement lasting eight decs, Tau fleet elements were forced to disengage and withdrew from the area in good order after inflicting considerable damage on the Mont'au'Gue'la terrorist forces..
(The huge form of a Merchant class starship hangs in the void, starlight occasionally curving around the perimeter of its gravitic shield. At once its forward gun turrets fire in a rippling pattern)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. Air Caste Command Penros has confirmed at least one Mont'au'Gue'la capital ship destroyed along with all of the initially detected escort ships in return for no Tau capital ship losses and only 5 escort ships reported downed..
(Viewed from above in monochrome through a Tau gun camera, the menacing form of a Chaos cruiser hangs in the cosmos. At once a series of brilliant white flashes ripple across its surface, tearing huge chunks from its hull in sprays of debris and molten fragments)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. The Tau admiralty strongly condemned the use of manned suicide vehicles and reckless disregard for life displayed by the Mont'au'Gue'la, while praising the discipline of its starship crews in timely use of emergency brace measures to avoid catastrophic losses, as well as the skill of its attack wing pilots in inflicting far greater damage on enemy shipping.
(A Tau Air Caste pilot, holding his helmet in one hand by his waist, talks into a microphone held from just out of sight)
Tau Air Caste: Kor'Tau Y'eldi Ko'va[Our guys did really good out there today, really good. The Manta crews did a really great job on their bombing runs and landed some really good hits on the opposing starships. We inflicted crippling damage on a lot of them, but they had some really unusual capabilities that let them make lots of little warp-space jumps around us while repairing their hulls, so we only managed to destroy one of their capital ships for good. Still, I'm really pleased with how my guys performed out there today]
(Farrier stands in a crisp white corridor of a Tau starship, star-strewn space visible in a large rectangular viewport behind him)
Farrier: The Tau coalition leadership is putting a lot of focus on the discipline and coordination of their starship crews, going on well-timed emergency brace orders to avoid the worst damage while inflicting heavy losses on the Mont'au'Gue'la ships in return, but the fact remains that the Tau fleet was ultimately forced to retreat, and that's a cause for serious concern behind closed doors. Initial reports seem to indicate that the Tau flotilla was caught unprepared - they had adopted a wide search pattern to patrol for minor pirate threats, and that left their two main formations out of position to support each other and vulnerable to the Mont'au Gue'la ships concentrating on them piecemeal, with the Tau admiral giving the order to withdraw after the flotilla was in danger of being defeated in detail. In any case the outcome of this battle remains indecisive, on the one hand the Tau did manage to inflict greater damage than they received, but they also failed to contain the Mont'au'Gue'la incursion, and it is believed three highly dangerous cruiser-class warships remain at large in terrorist hands.
(The frontal prow of an Emissary class starship sweeps across the bottom of view, a tiny point of light maintaining precise echelon formation ahead of it in the starry distance)
Farrier (VO): The remaining Mont'au'Gue'la warships are believed to have left the vicinity of Penros VI shortly after the engagement, and additional Tau ships arrived not long after to carry out search and rescue operations..
(The forward underside of a Manta sprawls across the top of view, the top of a Tau escape pod just visible at the bottom of view as the distant shape of an Emissary class starship draws closer)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. with sources from Air Caste Command Penros claiming the bulk of downed crew and pilots were successfully recovered..
(The massive form of a Messenger class starship powers across space, light pouring from its engines)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. Meanwhile remaining Tau Kor'vattra forces in the system have been placed on full alert..
(Nestled in a workstation, a Tau Air Caste diligently watches over the readout on the display screen of a sensor console)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. and extensive search operations are currently underway to hunt down the elusive Mont'au'Gue'la starships and neutralise them quickly before they can cause more harm..
(The huge form of a Merchant class starship powers forward through space, framed in a halo of light from its engines)
Farrier (VO Cont.): .. while additional Tau warships are being mobilised for the Penros system..
(Tau Earth Caste and drones scurry back and forth along a ruined starship corridor, replacing cables and welding panels and components back into place)
Farrier (VO Cont.): In the meantime, the race is on to get these wounded starships fully repaired, and back in the fight. From Penros System this is Farrier Seyburey, Tor'Vash'Por.
Idris: And joining us now to shed more light on the story we have Kor'El'Tau'n Shovah'Y'eldi'B'kyse, former Tau fleet commander and current instructor for the Leonov Naval Academy, on live feed, Kor'El just how concerned should we be about the Penros Expedition given this defeat in their first major space combat?
Shovah: ..... Well Idris the first thing you need to understand here is that the coalition's situation in space is very different to what's happening on the ground at the moment. As we're all aware the expeditionary ground forces landed have been on the.. on the... the back foot, almost since the first Rotaa in system, but the expeditionary force's position in space has been formidable for the same time-
Idris: Righ-
Shovah (Cont.): -which is after all why the Gue'la fleet, why they abandoned the system almost immediately-
Idris: Hang on hang on-
Shovah (Cont.): after landing the Gue'la Imperial invasion force on Penros VII, after a few shows of force it was very apparent that they would have no hope of challenging the Kor'vattra forces deployed-
Idris: OK but it's all well and good to say that the coalition fleet is this massive juggernaut of force, yet as we've clearly seen they've had their first real combat action in the system, and it ended in a failure for them. I mean they've already acknowledged losing five escort starships and being forced to retreat, so how capable can the Tau fleet in the Penros system really be?
Shovah: Yes it's true they have suffered a setback here, but this is also only one relatively small operation in a wider campaign here, and I would say fixating on the outcome of this one specific engagement is going to be missing the... to be missing the... missing the... the trees... missing the trees for the forest... the forest for the trees rather.
Idris: So you're saying there's a bigger picture here that we're missing?
Shovah: Right, exactly, you need to account for the strategic situation and the strategic situation for the Penros coalition fleet right now is still very strong, yes they have taken losses but as bad as those losses might have been they are survivable. The capital ships that were damaged can be repaired, while the destroyed Mont'au'Gue'la starship cannot, and in the meantime the coalition fleet still heavily outnumbers these raiders and is still maintaining control over the Penros system.
Idris: But what about the advanced technical characteristics displayed by these Mont'au'Gue'la warships, I mean they can clearly outmanouevre the Tau ships in battle, so what's to stop them from just doing that again and again?
Shovah: Well nothing really, but as we've seen from this very engagement they're also not invincible, and our ships can catch and destroy them. And that goes back to my point, if the coalition fleet can continue to just catch and destroy even one of those starships every time they're encountered, that's a rate of loss that's unsustainable for these Mont'au'Gue'la, whereas with the logistics base behind the Penros Coalition we can sustain a few starships crippled here or a few escort ships lost there.
Idris: So would you say then that you don't think there's any danger here for the Penros mission?
Shovah: I wouldn't say that exactly, no.
Idris: Alright so what would you say is the greatest concern facing the Penros Coalition fleet at the moment then?
Shovah: Right now I would say that the biggest threat for the Kor'vattra in Penros is the strategic precedent. Up until now the fleet has been acting almost as a fleet-in-being, where you have this situation where the Kor'vattra is.. where it's almost that the THREAT of the fleet is more potent than it's combat power, like for instance where the threat of interdiction was enough to drive off the Imperial Gue'la invasion fleet from the system, and the Kor'vattra retreating from this engagement, it... it undermines that.
Idris: So hang on, just before you were saying how strong the coalition's position in space was, and now you're saying this battle has weakened it? Which one is it here?
Shovah: I would say the coalition's position in space is still strong, but now it's fragile. Up until now it's been able to command unchallenged control over Penros System space, and now that control has been challenged, and that sets a precedent for other forces to start making bolder actions, there's now concerns among the Kor'ar'tol for instance that the local Ores'la might start taking bolder actions against coalition space assets, and that Imperial Gue'la naval forces might return to the system in greater strength, and while all of these various powers don't necessarily pose a threat individually, if they all start attacking at the same time it could quickly see the Kor'vattra in the system overwhelmed.
Idris: Alright so how would you suggest that the coalition might be able to rectify that issue?
Shovah: Well the Kor'ar'tol is reinforcing the system and I think that's already a good move to make sure that we retain at least local space superiority over some of these potential adversaries, and especially that we outnumber them in ships and tonnage, and the local coalition command taking the initiative in tracking down these Mont'au'Gue'la warships is also a good move since they need to be neutralised quickly while the coalition fleet still has that advantage in numbers and logistics over them and has the luxury of focusing down on one threat at a time, so they're off to a good start already. Beyond that I think it's mostly going to be a matter of choosing their battles wherever possible, and trying to gain more leverage on the ground so that the Penros Coalition has more options for power projection beyond aerospace control.
Idris: Right, now unfortunately we are just about to run out of time but one final thing I do want to ask you about Kor'El is what do you make of the suicide vehicles we've seen used by these terrorists here?
Shovah: I am sickened to my core, I cannot find any other.. any other words for it. It's already fairly well known that these Mont'au'Gue'la terrorists they don't normally have any regard for the sanctity of life, but deliberately putting hundreds if not thousands - and that's something we have to remember there, these vehicles, they're modified boarding torpedoes that they accommodate hundreds if not thousands on board - but deliberately putting all those hundreds if not thousands directly in the way of..
Idris: Kor'El-
Shovah (Cont.): .. ah, not one but many many incoming fusion missiles, this is just a total atrocity no matter how you put it, and I'm just ah... I'm just... ahhh... it's barely... it just doesn't comprehend just how a sentient spacefaring people..
Idris: Kor-
.. could not... not just take the option of that but, you know, willingly and gladly go along for it..
Idris: Kor'El I'm sorry-
Shovah (Cont.): .. as if purposefully killing that many people achieves any good purpose.. It's just horrifying, it's something out of our Mont'au.
Idris: Alright Kor'El'Tau'n Shovah'Y'eldi'B'kyse I'm afraid I am going to have to leave it there as we are running out of time but thank you for joining us we are very grateful to have your expertise on the matter.
Shovah: Thank you Idris.
Idris: Meanwhile now Tau authorities are growing increasingly alarmed at escalating tensions in the Ferndel sub-sector. Imperial Gue'la forces have managed to repel an attack by Mont'au'Gue'la terrorists on the fourth moon of Sturges Maxima. The fighting has caused significant damage to the civilian settlements on the moon and represents a serious escalation in the region, correspondent Zara Abdi has more for us now.
(We see a sweeping vista of lush rugged woodland. Thick black plumes of smoke rise from numerous points along the treeline. Automatic gunfire echoes across the landscape.)
Zara (VO): Fierce fighting broke out today on Sturges Maxima's fourth moon, as Mont'au'Gue'la terrorists launched an attack on the ancient city of Ostroglamesh, a renowned cultural heritage site in the system..
(Explosions echo along a rugged tree-covered mountain valley)
Zara (VO, Cont.): .. The armed group is believed to have been roughly Cadre sized and comprised of heavily armed Ores'la'Gue'la fighters, thought to former Imperial Astartes shock troops with links to the notorious Night Lords terror group..
(A sprawling woodland rushes past the view from the roof of a speeding ground-car, beneath a brilliant sunset. The gas giant of Sturges Maxima fills the upper sky. The sky is smudged with thick black funnels of smoke pouring up from beyond the tree line)
Zara (VO Cont.): ..Sources indicate these fighters were equipped with a range of advanced Imperial weaponry including a number of heavy powered combat armour suits..
(In the dark of night, the black hulking shapes of Rhino APCs can be seen rolling through the deserted main street of an Imperial town)
Zara (VO Cont.): The armed group occupied the Ostroglamesh ruins at dawn, where they were met with a reinforced cadre-strength force of Imperial Astartes shock troops belonging to the elite Dark Angels Brigades of the Gue'la Imperial Army, supported by heavy combat walker..
(In a shaky view of pre-dawn darkness the silhouette of a Land Speeder can be made out, speeding across the countryside at the head of a plume of bright purple-blue flame)
Zara (VO Cont.) .. and light skimmer assets..
(In the midday sun a vast towering gothic palace of marble and alabaster adorned with Imperial iconography dominates the skyline of a small stone cityscape)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. Gue'la Imperial authorities are reporting that the Dark Angels Brigade force managed to decisively rout the Mont'au'Gue'la terrorists after a brutal nine hour battle..
(We see an entrance to the palace up close, filling the background with its ominous might. Tiny figures move up and down two vast sets of stone steps flanked by two colossal statues of grey stone, a roaring lion on the left and a tall proud-looking woman, clad in flowing robes and an archaic helmet holding a spear and shield, on the right)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. but sources indicate the Dark Angels shock troops suffered heavy losses in the fighting, with estimates claiming as high as a fifty percent casualty rate..
(We see a still image of a large complex of white stone ruins nestled amongst lush green woodland threaded with roads and pathways, viewed from above. Craters, scorched ground and other signs of battle are everywhere. The view zooms in on a section of ground, focusing on the wrecked form of an archaic Imperial Dreadnought adorned with winged sword iconography. One leg has been blasted clean in half, and a series of jagged gaping holes have been punched across its rear engine block.
Zara (VO Cont.): ..and the confirmed loss of at least one heavy combat walker, showing signs of catastrophic damage from heavy laser and automatic cannon impacts..
(Viewed from behind the windshield of a moving ground-car, a group of figures clad in black body armour, their faces concealed, patrol a distant checkpoint, slowly getting closer as the ground-car moves along a stretch of road through deep green forests. At once the ground-car stops at the sound of a series of crackling pops, the windshield cracks from an impact and the ground-car frantically turns around and drives back from whence it came)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. Imperial officials have denied claims that so-called etheric lifeforms were present in the fighting and that they managed to overrun the ruined temple at the heart of the Ostroglamesh site. They have also refused to comment on speculation that the Ostroglamesh site has some form of undisclosed etheric resonance, although the ruins remain under strict quarantine by Imperial secret police elements..
(An Imperial settlement burns in the night, fire blazing from much of its buildings. The night sky is painted in a bloody red-orange glow)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. The aftermath of the battle has seen no end to the fighting, with remaining Mont'au'Gue'la terror cells launching a series of brutal reprisal attacks on outlying civilian settlements. Well over a dozen towns and villiages have been razed to the ground, and there are unconfirmed reports of chemical weapons being deployed against more still.
(Zara walks along the street of a small village of Imperial buildings)
Zara: The threat of widespread use of weapons of mass destruction by the terrorist forces in the Sturges system is a very real threat for civilians on the ground - analysts in the Tau intelligence community believe there is credible evidence that the particular armed group active here is armed with a considerable stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, and it is thought that they would have no hesitation of deploying them against civilian targets to undermine resistance against them. These are ordinary human citizens now fearful for their lives, yet the Gue'la Imperial authorities have yet to make any public acknowledgement of the danger facing them, much less take any action at all to ensure their safety.
(Plumes of thick black smoke rise from a ruined Imperial settlement)
Zara (VO): Instead Gue'la Imperial forces have launched a widespread and repressive crackdown on the civilian populace. Locals from around the Ostroglamesh region have reported Imperial Astartes shock troops sweeping through their towns and villiages and burning their homes to the ground..
(A stampede of humans clad in Imperial peasant attire flee in terror down a street from the sound of automatic gunfire a few blocks away)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. Many have been killed by Imperial Astartes death squads, while many more have been abducted by Dark Angels Brigade fighters, never to be seen again..
(A long column of humans in ragged Imperial clothing trudge down a road through the countryside, clearly unkempt and weary. Some of them pull crude handcarts behind them loaded with goods, others simply hold a few boxes or cartons in their arms)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. Streams of refugees are now a common sight among the countriside of the Ostroglamesh region, desperate for respite.
(A hardy-looking human civilian aged in his mid 30s talks into a microphone held from just out of sight)
Local Civilian: They came to our town at night, they burned everything. They shot my brother and my nephew in the street, there was nothing left but bloody shreds of flesh. I do not understand what we have done wrong?
(A distraught human villager in her mid 20s talks into a microphone held from just out of sight)
Local Villager: My children! My children! Why did they kill them, they were innocent!
(A gnarled sun-kissed human elder in his mid-to-late 60s talks into a microphone held from just out of sight)
Local Elder: Every day we pray to the Emperor for Him to keep us safe! He sends us His angels, we are told his angels are beings of mercy for man, yet they come and destroy everything! They came for my wife, she disappeared! The Emperor's angels, the traitors, they are all the same! All the same!
(Skimmer traffic moves back and forth past a large dome adorned with the Tau Empire insignia, nestled in the middle of a compound of gleaming futuristic structures)
Zara (VO): The Tau embassy mission in the Ferndel sub-sector has expressed strong alarm at the deteriorating situation, and Tau authorities are urging both sides to show restraint and avoid civilian casualties at all costs..
(Streams of skimmer traffic move past a massive dome adorned with the Tau Empire insignia, nestled in the middle of a dense bustling Tau city)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. Despite increased calls for Tau peacekeepers in the region, Tau leadership remains hesitant to commit a larger military presence in the Ferndel sub-sector, and high-ranking Sept Councils are believed to be in heated debate over the subject..
(Masses of supplies, including large piles of full grain sacks, stacks of water and fuel tanks, and towering piles of cargo crates, are loaded into the open rear hatch of a large Tau cargo lander at a busy Tau starport)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. Tau officials have announced that plentiful humanitarian aid support is available for dispatch to the sub-sector at immediate notice should the local government request it..
(Imperial civilians are seen hard at work building up and reinforcing the buildings in their settlement. Some have had sandbags piled around them while others have their windows boarded shut)
Zara (VO Cont.): .. In the meantime the people of the Sturges System can only prepare for the worst, and wonder if the bloodshed will reach them next. From the fourth moon of Sturges Maxima I'm Zara Abdi, Tor'Vas'Por.
Idris: And to talk more about this story correspondent Lindsay Black has prepared this for us, from the Tau Sept world of Dal'yth Prime.
(Lindsay stands in front of a vast bustling Tau cityscape of gleaming white and grey. Orderly streams of skimmer traffic can be seen moving back and forth in the distance behind her)
Lindsay: We've been told that local Sept Council leaders here are still going back and forth between both their counterparts in T'au and numerous allied governments including the Gue'vessa Federation, and it's believed that the Dal'yth Sept will be receiving delegations from T'au, Pech and the Gue'vessa Federation amongst numerous other alien representation to discuss possible action plans for the Ferndel situation. Now Tau leadership appears to still be very hesitant about direct military commitment to the Ferndel subsector, not least due to unstable situations in several other regions much closer to Tau space including the Penros sub-sector, and consensus seems to be that these other crises would need to at least be stabilised first given that any large scale mission to the Ferndel sub-sector would need to pass through a number of those other threatened regions of space first.
The other factor at work here of course is that so far none of the local authorities in the Ferndel subsector have made any formal requests for Tau assistance, unlike in the Penros region where there was a very emphatic call for help, and Tau leaders seem to feel that as much as they would like to help their hands are tied as they don't want to directly violate galactic law unless they have no choice, which would require louder voices than the fairly low-level ones coming from the citizens on the ground.
It's a very complex cosmopolitical situation, but the offices of the Tau Ethereal Caste have announced that they are greatly saddened at the pain of the civilians affected by this conflict, that their suffering is irreconcilable to the Tau'va, that's of course the greater good, and that they desperately hope to be able to do something more to help as soon as possible.
Idris: Moving onto other news now and preparations are underway on Iris to host the upcoming All-Federation Leadership Summit. Delegations are underway from across the Gue'vessa Federation and are expected to discuss coordination in social welfare, interstellar trade and collective foreign policy plans, with top issues expected to be...
