Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG, Book Review

I like tabletop roleplaying hexcrawls. I think they are a neat way of telling a story though environmental descriptions, encounters, and snippets of world lore that players gather and ponder over, while maintaining players’ freedom of exploration. 

I own a few hexcrawls that I’m very happy with. The OSR juggernaut, Luke Gearing’s Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign. Times that Fry Men’s Souls, the weird hexcrawl set in Colonial New York and New Jersey by Seann McAnally. Gods of the Forbidden North: Volumes 1 and 2, a fantastic frozen hexcrawl, dungeon crawl, and campaign setting. 

This begs the question however, “what is a hexcrawl?” Eric Diaz of the blog Methods & Madness describes a hexcrawl as “exploring a territory that is divided by hexes, with no clear paths.” He goes on to briefly define the sister type of map adventure called “pointcrawls” as “exploring a territory through preexisting paths and points of interest.”

This blog post will be about one type of hexcrawl that I think is a bit rare in the tabletop roleplaying space.  Specifically, the post-apocalyptic hexcrawl for the OSR genre. I am talking about the book Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG which was released on the 20th of February 2026.  Now this one has a heady injection of supernatural horror added to it, but in it’s bones it is firmly in the post-apocalyptic genre. 

Most hexcrawls, like the three I listed in the second paragraph, are fantasy based.  Post-apocalyptic hexcrawls are few and far between, but there are handful I can think of. The Mutant Year: Zero series of books by Free League Publishing have systems for developing a “squarecrawl,” which is essentially just a hexcrawl but with squares.  Kevin Crawford, rpg author of Other Dust and Ashes Without Number, provides excellent worldbuilding tools for hexcrawls with post-apocalyptic themes in those two books.  

The author of Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG specifically cites Rural Apocalypse: Antler Valley by David Woodrum (Fishwife Games) as an inspiration and collaborator for his creation.  I’ll be referring to Antler Valley: A Hexcrawl For the Great Plains Apocalypse RPG by Daymon Mills hereafter as “Antler Valley.”

Book Review and Mechanics of Antler Valley

In short, Antler Valley is a 78-page post-apocalyptic hexcrawl inhabited by cryptids, spirits, mutants and the desperate.  It features 58 entries on a 3d20 random encounter table, 27 hexes that are fully described, 5 hooks to snare players into the area, multiple stories that cover several hexes, weird weather with mechanical effects, and a cryptid bestiary: all for under $5.  

I really like Antler Valley and for the price it is a steal.

The characters and combat encounters in Antler Valley are specifically built for the Great Plains Apocalypse (GPA) RPG system.  

I don’t own the GPA core book, but it is my understanding that it is a rules light system based on OSR bones that has 3 stats: scientist, scoundrel, and soldier.  Skill checks are resolved by rolling 2d6, adding the stat that is most relevant to the challenge, and comparing the result to an 8 or higher if the action is difficult. 

Functionally characters and combat encounters in Antler Valley are described with hit points, equipment and possibly a talent or two. This makes it very easy to adapt the encounters from the GPA framework to any other system you desire. 

For example, on page 23 some Thugs are described as having 4 HP, 9mm pistols (1d6+1 damage, have a -1 penalty for far range), and combat knives (1d6 damage).  This stat block is easily convertible to any OSR modern system or even something like GURPS or Delta Green’s 1d100 system.

Setting and Plot

Speaking of Thugs, the setting of the hexcrawl is very “Fallout-like” with gangs, mutants, survivors, cryptids and a variety of supernatural creatures. This also influences the treasure found in caches and abandoned buildings in the valley. No magic items here; treasure is mostly supplies, fuel, food (including animals/plants) and weapons. For example, the players may be overjoyed to find heirloom apples (including Arkansas Black, Geneva Crab and Virginia Beauty) in an Old Apple Orchard. It will keep them going for at least one more day. 

Another focus of the treasure pool is vehicles or important parts for vehicles. Part of the plot of Antler Valley is trying to find the equipment and fuel sufficient to leave the valley.  The driving reasons for this is that there are two existential threats hanging over the hexcrawl.  The first is that two monstrous kaiju fought and killed each other in the woods, leaving strange mutating phenomena that is slowing spreading to the enclaves of survivors in the valley.  The other is a growing supernatural threat that sort of serves as a “countdown to doomsday” tracker for the game as a whole.  I’ll leave that undescribed, however. 

Speaking of the hexcrawl’s plot, there are two major story threads that are woven into multiple hexes in the valley. Imagine Jason from Friday the Thirteenth but with a shotgun, a two-handed butcher blade named Hog Splitter, and three enormous mutant hounds.  This is the Butcher, a once-man now-cannibal malevolent presence that predates on the locals, be they human or animal.  A good number of hexes have evidence of that disturbing bushwhacker, and he can be considered one of the major bosses of the scenario. 

The Butcher’s story intersects with that of Cole and Lauren, two survivors whose narrative is doled out in letters and caches of supplies scattered over the land.  Unless the GM decides otherwise, Cole and Lauren are unmeetable presences that describe part of the valley’s history.   This type of storytelling is similar to the story of the Survivalist illuminated in letters found in the Fallout New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts.  This plot thread is very flexible and can be as poignant or melancholic as the GM decides. 

In addition to the main plots of the hexcrawl, there are 58 entries on a random encounter table. These random encounters are suggested for spicing up some of the non-keyed hexes in the valley.  The encounters range from cryptids such as the smelly sheepsquatch (evidently a creature in Virginia’s folklore) to a junked-out car that is home to a stray mother cat and her kittens.  The entries can be used for flavorful post-apocalyptic stories, and there are elements that point to the main plots of the Butcher, and Cole and Lauren’s activities in the valley.  My personal favorite entry is Dale. He’s just an elderly man in a rocking chair out in the post-apocalypse with a hidden hunting rifle that he will immediately greet you with if you approach. 

Layer onto these encounters, seasonal tables for weird weather with 7 unique entries.  You do need the Great Plains Apocalypse core book for some of these weather entries.  However, the three weird weathers described for Antler Valley (drifting pollen, prismatic mite winds, static blizzard) are all interesting, mechanically distinct, and described in the book.  They certainly add a layer of complication to encounters found in the valley either in keyed hexes or randomly generated. 

Also, some of the hexcrawl encounters are dynamic.  For example, clearing the Junked Cars (#5 keyed hex) of its mysterious inhabitant allows the players access to a treasure trove of vehicle parts, tools, scrap metal and some basic supplies.  The players could use such a location as a base of operations!  However, the author notes that liberating the junkyard could make the players’ situation even more dangerous, as the local gang the Wildfire Boys (from hex #4) will investigate habitation of the junkyard and try to claim it violently.  Another example is most of the factions of the valley responding significantly more favorably to the party if the Butcher is slain. Some of them will even provide their relevant trade goods. 

The bestiary at the end of the book contains some mundane threats but mostly supernatural ones. There is not one, but two variants of sasquatches that come from Virigina folklore. My personal favorite is the “REGS” or Rainbow-Eyed Goats.  The are man-eating aggressive mutant animals that can basically paralyze you with the prismatic light flashing from their eyes.  And yes, they hunt in packs. Now the reason why the goats have rainbow eyes is related to the prismatic mutation influence from one of the kaiju who died outside the valley whose taint is infesting the area.  All these little story details are really well tied together in Antler Valley. 

Conclusion

So how is the Antler Valley Hexcrawl? I haven’t run it myself, but I find the book very inspiring for post-apocalyptic adventures that have a strong undertone of horror. It is well written, details of themes are tied up nicely together over several encounters and hexes, and for 78 pages of material it is a steal at less than $5.  Antler Valley may require some mechanical adaption to your favorite system, but I think it’s worth it.  My only quibble is that I would like to have seen more trading opportunities and goods between factions in the valley, but wanting more content only reinforces the excellent material that is there in the book. 

Choir of Flesh, Useful Tables

 Choir of Flesh has many evocative descriptions in its tables. I wanted to add to them. On pages 100 and 101 of the core book there are d20 tables for Ruined Landmark and Natural Feature descriptions, respectively.  Here are my 10 additions for each table, with day and night variations for each entry.

Environmental Storytelling

There are stories behind a handful of the entries. I hope my intent of what has happened in the locations comes across in the descriptions. 

Ruined Chimney - A family was immolated in their house by Purifiers here 

Chalk Mound - The Choir turned a parent protecting his two children into chalk statues. Now they erode into dust when the wind blows. 

Chapel of the Dancing Plague – The Dancing Plague was a real event! Most famously it occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern France) in 1518. However, I got my hands on a paper in the Lancet (medical journal) called “A forgotten plague: making sense of dancing mania” by John Waller.

Waller’s article describes the dancing mania as being recorded as early as Christmas Eve in 1021. Since the twin apocalypses of Choir of Flesh occur in 1001 AD, I thought I could include a nod to this odd event in medieval history as the dates are close enough.  

Lancet article on the dancing plague found here.

Abandoned Suit of Armor- This references the biblical story of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. Lay the blame at the feet of the Choir for turning the Norman warrior into salt.  

Eerie Farmstead- The peasants were assumed into heaven in a Rapture. 

Copse of the Watchful Squirrels - I attempted to make squirrels scary without making them homicidal flesh eaters.

Ring of Burning Toadstools – This references the Burning Bush that Moses encountered in the Old Testament story. 

Additional Thoughts

I would like some advice from you, the reader, about software or techniques to improve the layout of my tables. Currently I make them in word or excel and frankly I would like to present them in a more aesthetically pleasing manner.  Please post ideas in the comments below. 

In the core Choir of Flesh book, the brutal Purifiers are described on page 98 in a single dramatic paragraph and in the NPC stat block on page 198.  But what we know about them is limited.  

Frankly, I want more. It is stated that they act as general antagonists; fighting the Choir, the Flesh and anyone else they feel like. There has got to be more detail and interesting nuance BlackOath Entertainment has in store for us. 

Also, we know that the Purifiers have taken over the city of Tours and use it as home base. What does the city look like after the twin apocalypses?  Are there conflicts in the city between factions in the Purifiers?  Are citizens huddled inside locked doors praying for salvation, or is there trade between neighborhoods and some semblance of civilization continuing?  The Choir and the Flesh are omnipresent.  Do they subtly influence encounters and terrain inside the city?  

What would that look like, for example, in a random table? 

These are some of the questions that go through my mind when reading and playing this game of medieval and cosmic horror.  

Choir of Flesh, Apocrypha Early Access

 The medieval post-apocalypse horror rpg Choir of Flesh has been released after a successful kickstarter. It can now be found on DriveThruRPG here and itch.io here!  Full disclosure, the DTRPG link is the affiliate link for my blog. 

I have written a partial review of Choir of Flesh and completed character creation for a solo game here.

The kickstarter for Choir of Flesh also had a number of stretch goals.  These stretch goals for additional mechanics, backstory and tables are coming in the form of a zine called Apocrypha.  I have had the opportunity to read a beta version of Apocrypha that contains some of the art, and I can say with full conviction that it is really good with more Choir of Flesh eye-popping art, and equally top-tier writing.  

My book review of the 33 pages of Apocrypha will follow. You can get your hands on Apocrypha if you are a kickstarter backer likely next month, once it is fully complete, according to Blackoath Entertainment.  Public release is expected to come in January 2026.  At that point Apocrypha will be available for purchase via DTRPG, itch.io and Amazon.

Onward to the book review!

The Nephilim

Apocrypha opens with the last stretch goal: The Nephilim’s Arrival. Now what is a Nephilim? In the Hebrew Bible Nephilim are supposedly beings of great size and strength or possibly great power and authority which some sources claim are offspring of rebellious angels and humans.  

Apocrypha has a unique really interesting take on Nephilim that further builds out the world of Choir of Flesh.  Nephilim are alchemical amalgams of a Choir’s Angel stripped down and fused with human body parts and elements of the Flesh so that the giant monstrosity functions as one unit from disparate parts. This giant, Frankensteinian creature was made as a weapon against both the Choir and the Flesh by gnostics with alchemical techniques. As the book says, with a chilling line, “This [Nephilim] was a weapon of war. It did not need to stay sane.” 

This is great worldbuilding. We already know that members of the Roman Catholic Church are terrorized by the Choir in Italy and pagans are competing or just trying to survive the Flesh when it has been summoned in their lands. Now we know what a new group of people, the gnostics, are doing in the twin apocalypse of 1001 AD.  

Frankly this is exactly what I wanted from an expansion of Choir of Flesh. It provides more information about what other peoples are doing in this blasted post-apocalyptic medieval world and how they are coping, or seizing on the opportunity for change. 

The chapter continues, describing how the Nephilim are a threat to the settlement you have built in the base game. Ultimately the Nephilim will be inexorably drawn to your lands to wreak havoc unless you and your party charge into a new Incursion written for Apocrypha, find the Nephilim’s spoor, and destroy it. 

One of the many things I like about this chapter is the use of color symbolism in the Omens that herald the Nephilim’s coming; and the same symbolism is sprinkled throughout the encounters in the new Incursion.  The Choir and Flesh are well defined in the core book, so how is the Nephilim, this amalgam between the two, made distinct?

The author uses the colors red and crimson in natural and unnatural phenomena to signify the Nephilim’s encroaching violence.  One quote I can give from the book is “Grasshoppers and butterflies turn bright crimson in the fields and die midflight.”  There are other Omens that describe red ants pouring forth from the ground and swarming in the air; and crimson clovers releasing choking pollen.  In addition, in the Incursion an exploration is described that progresses through a ruined gnostic laboratory. During this delve, the color red is featured in various descriptions and progressively as the player’s reaches the Incursion’s dark climax. 

This style of writing is literary and not often seen in tabletop rpgs. As I said before, the writing in this book it top-notch. 

In addition, there are elements of the design of the new Incursion to find the Nephilim’s spoor that stand out to me as being well crafted.  In the core book, an Incursion is randomly generated from a table of 100 points of interest.  These points of interest are all thematic, graphic, and dangerous; but they are mostly self-contained.  The points of interest in the new Nephilim Incursion are steps in a journey the lead to the climax of a story.  

There is foreshadowing in the early points of interest.  Features of the Flesh and the Choir are seen in the same setting; casually side by side as seams of meat in the earth along with wildflowers that sing the Choir’s song when wind passes them by.  Or more grotesquely in a stone circle where one hemisphere has been infested by the Flesh and the other half is consecrated to the Choir. In that supernaturally charged locale the players are forced to make a choice between the two sides or navigate a third more dangerous middle path.  

The themes of alchemy are slowly revealed in the nine points of interest.  A terrible implied alchemical accident has created a morbid watchtower that may test the player’s humanity.  A dormitory is found before the ruined gnostic workshop that birthed the horrid Nephilim is encountered.  Abhorrent alchemical experiments can be found in both locations and the subsequent one in which there is a particular flower. I will not discuss the final area. It is for you to discover. 

New Notable Citizens

Moving along in Apocrypha, we come to the new Notable Citizens chapter.  All the new Notable Citizens are great and would be vibrant characters to interact with, but four stand out to me as having deeper roleplay potential.  Brother Gregor the Anatomist, Bastian the Reeve, Luc the Lookout, and Isolier the Sin Eater are characters that frankly I want to plop down in a multiplayer game and have my players interact with them. 

Take Bastian the Reeve for example. A reeve is an administrative official serving a king or lesser lord in a variety of roles in Anglo-Saxon England. In Apocrypha, Bastian can act as your settlement’s judge, jury and enforcer of the law.  And Bastian clings to the “Old Law” as fervently as your Unbroken character clings to their Sin to keep them going through the horrors of the apocalypse.  In a multiplayer game, you could spend a couple hours with this character debating the morality of Old World Law, if it even applies in this post-apocalyptic world, if it should be revised, or even based on a more religious or humanistic world view. Isolier the Sin Eater has similar interaction potential on the themes of Sin and redemption.

New Settlement Options

Next up, we have the new settlement options chapter. This is full of random tables to flesh out your settlement, including tables for the surrounding environment, weather, the central structure of the settlement, quirks for your population as a whole with mechanical effects, downtime events, and the notorious Celebration and Carousing table. Someone had a fun time writing this because entries such as It Is Vital That We Go Into The Fields And Knock Over The Cows and Absolute Blowout are quite fun.  This re-centers the idea in Choir of Flesh that the player is trying to maintain their humanity in this grim-dark horrific apocalypse. 

New Character Options

In the new character options chapter, there are 16 new Feats and 8 new Drawbacks. I'll have to spend some time theory crafting to really have an opinion on those.  The new Drive and Revelation mechanics look good. Drive is a new resource for player to spend to enhance their rolls to be heroic or survive by just squeaking by. It does make players more powerful or resilient but I do not think it makes them overpowered, since Choir of Flesh’s encounters can be punishing.  I do think that Drive is more useful for a game master than it is in solo play because the Drive resource is replenished by roleplaying their Passions (Sin, Doom or Anchor), their Drawbacks and just by participating in a session.  That is not to say that one cannot use Drive in solo play. Far from it, the mechanics are there and simple to fulfill. I just think that giving points of Drive is a nice reward that is not experience, treasure or settlement resource related that encourages players to explore their Passions in the Choir of Flesh world with a game master present. 

Final Thoughts

Apocrypha is 33 pages with no space wasted. Either there is excellent art, interesting new mechanics, or compelling story present.  Having said that, what more would I like to see in the future? Well, there is a line on page 7 that has fired my imagination. "The pagans who summoned the Flesh were immediately subsumed into its ranks, becoming undifferentiated gristle at the heart of something ancient."

What is going on with the pagans? Which pagans? How are they coping with members of their population turning to the Flesh or the Choir?  Is it possible that a fraction of a pagan tribe got trapped inland and now may interact with your settlement because they were on a boat when the Seas turned to Flesh and they are displaced? 

There is a lot of fertile history to be mined in the vibrant world of Choir of Flesh and I want to see more of it. 

Choir of Flesh Part 1: Early Access and Character Creation

“And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal,/Silence covered the sky.” 

-Enigma, Rivers of Belief. A description of Revelation 8:1-5. 

It is the year of our Lord 1000.  There is a crack in Heaven.  Light and Song erupt from the spiritual wound in the sky.  Seven Trumpets sound, breaking the Seven Seals, which pour out the Seven Bowls of God's wrath.  The eschaton has come.

Revelation is at hand!

But not Salvation. Oh no.

The Celestial Choir descend from above and their Song reshapes the flesh of those who hear it. New mouths sprout from mortal flesh, gasping in eternal prayers and psalms. Bones resonate in synchrony with the Song and those humans who bow to the Will of their Celestial masters become remade into fleshy abominations called Penitents.

But that is not the worst. Oh no.

Something ancient, Evil and Silent climbs from the abyssal spaces of the Earth. Flooding from the once proud city of Toledo, now engulfed by the Earth; The Flesh That Feeds has come and it unmakes all, human, and Nature alike.  Forests are converted to flesh, mankind is respun into the Unmade; all touched with a terrible unstoppable hunger. 

These two unnatural eldritch forces clash and the survivors of the last civilization of humanity must eke out a meager existence, stuck between twin apocalyptic forces.  

This is the world of the Choir of Flesh, the latest brainchild of Alex T. from Blackoath Entertainment.

I am a Patreon member of Blackoath Entertainment (Order of the Black Oath) at the Evocatus level, and as lovely consequence I have obtained the Beta 1 release of the Choir of Flesh solo focused RPG game. As of the time of this writing, the Beta 1 of Choir of Flesh was released about 20 hours ago.  In addition, for full disclosure, I am a member of Alex T’s discord and have corresponded with him. 

At the moment, early access to the Choir of Flesh Beta is only available through Patreon membership to the Order of the Black Oath. The full public release of the game is expected to occur at the end of September 2025. 

The current Beta document is a hefty 221 pages. I have read the first 45 pages. And yes, I am starstruck. Along with the evocative introduction, the first section includes: a description of the Core Themes, Character Creation, base-building mechanics called Your Settlement (options are included for playing Lone Wolf, or without a community to protect), description of mechanics for the core d20 Checks, and rules for the Humanity stat and the Anguish stat.

I find it interested that each character has to balance Anguish (which increases upon significant physical mental or spiritual shock) and Humanity (which decreases as the character is subjected to otherworldly forces of the Choir or The Flesh).  It creates this sort of push-pull claustrophobic feeling to the mechanics.  As an old Call of Cthulhu Game Master (Keeper), I think this is better than just a Sanity score that erodes over time. I can’t wait to try it out in game.  

Inspired by History

Historical research is a wonderful rabbit hole to dive into. Doubly so when one can adapt fascinating historical events, ideas and characters for use in a fictional world like Choir of Flesh.

Since I do not know too much about world history, and specifically Western Europe, in the run up to 1000 AD, I found this lovely Oxford Reference Timeline of the 10th century. 

The following are some choice historical excerpts and my speculation on how they may fit into the world of the Choir of Flesh.

“911, The Vikings settle in France, as Normans, when Rollo the Ganger is granted feudal rights over the region round Rouen.

Circa 981, Eric Thorvaldsson, or Eric the Red, sails to Greenland when he is exiled from Iceland.

Circa 1000, Leif Ericsson claims to have made landfall at three places in north America, one of which he names Vinland - the land of wine”

Choir of Flesh is focused on Spain in the Middle Ages but with the above data, one has an excuse for including Norse explorers into the apocalyptic world as Player Characters or NPCs.  Yes I am angling for an excuse to shoehorn Vikings into this setting! In particular I see Norse explorers as working in Choir of Flesh because the very seas have been taken over by The Flesh That Feeds and perhaps, they are tirelessly traveling to the epicenter, Toledo, to fix the problem.

“Circa 950, Medieval Europe's first institute of higher education is established, with the founding of the medical school at Salerno.”

Universities are filled with myth and legends.  Perhaps with 50 years of medieval medical research, where spirituality, religion, science and alchemy really did not have defined boundaries, some unspeakable cosmic secret was reveled at Salerno and caused either the opening of the Seals by the Choir or the quickening of The Flesh to plague the world.  

“Circa 900, With the end of iconoclasm, the screen between the nave and the altar sanctuary becomes covered in icons in Orthodox churches.

929, Wenceslas, a prince of the Premsylid family, is murdered on his way into church - and becomes Bohemia's patron saint.

Circa 960, Harald Bluetooth is baptized a Christian and unites the whole of Denmark as a single kingdom.

965, Mieszko, pagan chieftain of the Poles, marries a Christian Czech princess and brings all his people into the Roman Catholic fold.

975, The Hungarian king Gezá and his family are baptized as Roman Catholics, beginning a long link between Hungary and Rome.”

This is just a sampling of interesting historical religious changes and evolutions that occurred prior to 1000 AD.  For your Choir of Flesh game, your GM (or yourself if you are playing solo) could make any of these inciting incidents relevant for the development of the coming apocalypse. 

Alternatively, each of these events of religious significance could have revelations surrounding these events, that when pieced together, offer some sort of hope to defeat the Choir, The Flesh or seal the hole in Heaven.  Also, perhaps one has Unbroken who come from Hungary, Denmark, Poland, Bohemia or even from as far away as the Orthodox churches.

Character Creation

Without further ado, let’s make a character, called an Unbroken.  I rolled 4d6 for each Attribute (six times), dropped the lowest die and summed the remaining numbers on the three dice. Got the following numbers: 10,11, 9, 9, 14, 7.

I then assigned these numbers to my six Attributes, resulting in:

• STR 10
• DEX 9
• CON 11
• INT 14
• WIL 9
• PRE 7

So, this character has a +1 modifier to Intelligence rolls and a -1 modifier to Presence rolls.

With this Attribute profile a story begins to take shape. A mostly average gent who is sharper than normal uses his observational skills to stay one step ahead of the scourge of the Choir and The Flesh.  Shy by nature, this has only been exacerbated in the apocalypse where community ties and interpersonal communication are that much more important to survival. Will he learn how to navigate this new landscape or will he rot?

Next up this gent’s Defense Rating is +0 (currently), his Carrying Capacity is 10 and Initiative bonus is +0.

I am tired of calling him a gent at this point so I roll on the Random Name table on page 26 and get Malik.  Maybe Malik has a bit of an Arabic background.  I also settled on the idea that he came from a city (and wisely ran away when The Flesh came calling) and has an interest in medicine, but a bedside manner that leaves a lot to be desired.

Weapon and armor proficiencies are Spear and Gambeson. I figure his first spear was a makeshift thing that was his trusty dagger tied to a washerwoman’s pole. I’m getting the sense of a lucky survivor from this character.

Malik’s Feat is Lucky. It just has to be based on the story that is emerging from this character. Lucky allows one reroll of any check once per session.

Jumping ahead in the sequence of events for Character creation, I am choosing Malik’s Occupation as a Healer.  His skill from being a Healer is Healing (INT), gain +2 Mastery to checks related to healing, which makes sense. His Burden will tie into his shyness.  His craft as a Healer is now seen as witchcraft by the desperate.  A fact he does not correct because he is too embarrassed to admit he did not adequately pursue his medical studies before the apocalypse hit, and he is unsure about how effective he really is.  

Malik’s four other skills are: Brace (STR), once per combat, you can make a Hard STR check to ignore all damage from a single source; this is a Reaction. Perception (INT), gain +2 Mastery to checks related to general perception and awareness. Disease Resistance (CON), gain +2 Mastery to checks against disease. Quick Feet (DEX), Malik has two Move Actions each round.

Yes, Malik is shaping up to be a canny survivor.  I imagine him like a wary scavenger looting the outskirts of supernatural incursions…and the less lucky bodies of Unbroken who tried to be heroic. Perhaps he made some of those Unbroken into bodies himself. Time will tell.

For Malik’s Sin, or core of his character, I rolled randomly and came up with Wrath. This is fascinating given the somewhat scavenger, almost cowardly bone picker I was envisioning.  I imagine that Malik keeps this secret close to his core and is more of a silent calculating fuming monster than an explosive berserker.  As to the focus of his Wrath and the inciting incident that caused the deep insult that wounded him in this world of cosmic horror, I am going to leave that for another time.

The Shard of the Old World that Malik carries to remind himself of the world that was is A Shard of Stained Glass.  I’ll say this is a fragment of a golden saint’s halo and an edge of a cerulean blue sky. A reminder of better days when the world was not turned upside down by insanity.  Perhaps Malik keeps it to remind him that beauty was once labored over and possibly could be created again? Or perhaps Malik used this shard of glass as the blade for his first makeshift spear that was used to escape from a city in the grip of terror.  In any case, he has an almost totemic obsession with it.

Malik’s Doom is the hope that he holds close to keep from bowing to the Choir’s song or accepting dissolution in the Flesh’s embrace. Rolling randomly, I get 10, The Divine Conductor.  Malik is somewhat educated and experienced religious music.  He is smart enough to realize that a song requires organization or else it becomes nothing but a cacophony. He believes the Choir has some sort of conductor, physical or supernatural, or maybe some sort of written musical plan. If Malik can find that plan and destroy it, maybe, just maybe the Choir will dissolve. Hope springs Eternal. 

Afterword

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it and exploring the development of the character Malik in this unique apocalyptic world of cosmic horror made by Alex T of Blackoath Entertainment.   I want to thank Clay TN on the Blackoath discord and link to their blog for inspiring me to write this.

Dark Sun Part 1: Introduction, Resources, Music and OSR adaptation

 

Dark Sun is a harsh desert world where traditional fantasy races have adapted to the wasteland in exotic new ways, and civilization is found in teeming city-states in the grip of nigh unrivaled tyrant Sorcerer-Kings who dominate their population with Mind as well as forbidden Magic.  It is a mix of Dune, Mad Max, Gladiator, Tolkien by way of Conan, and the ancient historical world (think Rome, Greece, etc.) all weaved together and honed into a fine point by the visionary artwork of Brom.

I first saw the AD&D Dark Sun Boxed Set cover when I was a young one and I never got over the siren song of the savage tablelands of Athas. 

When D&D 4th edition rolled around, Dark Sun was revisited as the Dark Sun Campaign Setting: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement.  On free RPG Day in 2010, the adventure book Bloodsand Arena was released, and this book had the very good idea of making the uniqueness of Dark Sun front and center by summarizing the Eight Characteristics of Athas in single sentences, which I will reiterate below.  

Eight Characteristics of Athas

1. The World Is a Desert

2. The World Is Savage

3. Metal Is Scarce

4. Arcane Magic Defiles the World

5. Sorcerer-Kings Rules the City-States

6. The Gods Are Silent

7. Fierce Monsters Roam the World

8. Familiar Races Aren’t What You Expect 

Each of these eight characteristics were further explored in about three paragraphs each, but this list serves as a quick and dirty primer for what players can expect about the Dark Sun world. 

What I am doing with Dark Sun, is adapting the setting and its mechanics to an OSR ruleset that is more lightweight than most systems. I am familiar with AD&D, as I started with those rules when I was first introduced to Dungeons and Dragons in the 90s.  I think the AD&D rules are overly fiddly in general, so I am not using that system to run Dark Sun.  

I enjoy the OSR heartbreaker Begone, FOE! written by mellonbread and magnificentophat so I am working on adapting Dark Sun to that system, because it is a streamlined short system of approximately 20 pages. The most current version of Begone, FOE! is Revision 15. 

For me this is a long-term project that I work on in the background occasionally. I am documenting this on the blog to motivate myself and archive material that hopefully someone else may find useful.

 

While wrestling with translating mechanics and rules from one system to another, I find it is easy for myself to sort of lose sight of the overall vison of Dark Sun that I want to portray to the players.  To remedy this, I have written up something I called “Bits and Pieces,” which are sensory focused descriptions that I want to put into my games.  I may turn these descriptions into characters, setpieces or experiences.  Each of these description fragments are intended to be independent of each other.  

Bits and Pieces

1. A female dancer on a stone table in a tavern. A psionic tattoo of a sandworm on her chest and stomach undulates in electric blue as she spins with a skirt made of alternating vivid red and green elbow-length feathers.

2. A contraband merchant beckons you into a shadowed alley. Suddenly a bandanna wearing man puts a blowgun to his lips and your world explodes into twinkling purple cloying dust…then the darkness of slumber.

3. A craftsman baking thin, brittle clay tablets that crawl with iridescent yellow letters, written by a psionic scribe. 

4. A leathery-skinned mercenary, body crisscrossed with scars, stands calf deep in a warm sand dune, the grit of fine glittering sand collecting at the corner of his eyes and the taste can never be fully expelled from his mouth. 

5. That relief you feel when you find a lone cactus in the desert with swollen fist sized cactus fruit. Careful peeling of the spine covered green skin with the jagged shard of a femur, unwraps a densely packed moist dark purple fruit dotted with seeds worth masticating for their gummy liquid.

6. The heady syrup of broy, fermented kank nectar, sharp with the taste of potent cinnamon and ginger clings to your lips as it coats your throat.

7. Abrasive sand against sweat soaked leather, stinking with salt. Your pulse pounding so hard it causes tremors in your wrists as you grip a brittle bleached-white femur. The overwhelming tidal wave of sound rising from the coliseum crowd as they roar for blood.  The brash clangor of bronze horns as they announce your name, gladiator.

8. A riot of crimson- and bone-colored petals rain down from above as flutists pipe delicate melodies and drummers resonate in your skull in time with the rhythm.  The blazing sun is mercifully blotted out for a moment, a moment that turns to trembling terror as something colossal with a cloying animal musk that reclines on a palanquin jingling with iron chains comes to rest in the parade. An ancient unspeakable malice sweeps over you, prickling at the back of your mind, as you prostrate yourself, lips pressed against the earth and dirt ground into your teeth.

Switching gears, I also want to present some excellent free resources I found on the Dark Sun subreddit, r/DarkSun, and elsewhere around the internet.   

Dark Sun Resources

1. Dark Sun OSE GM Guide and Player’s Handbook by Lixu

2. Dark Sun 5th edition by Marcus Stout

3. Dark Sun Tables and Alchemy Book by u/tutt_88

If you are interested in Dark Sun at all, or want a framework for filling out encounters/details/tables for your own sandbox game or game world, I highly recommend taking a look at the Dark Sun Tables document.

I am a little surprised something this extensive and quality was released for free.  For example, in the Location Exploration Finds of Athas d100 table, it has a strong variety of desert/wasteland terrain encounter locations that suggest plots and are great hooks for hex/point crawling.  There is even a reference to the Ozymandias poem by Shelly.

“Eroded Sorcerer-King Statue - A toppled statue, its face worn away, 50 cp in bronze fragments.”

If you just need Goals, Secrets, Virtues, Vices, or Moods for your NPCs even in a normal (Tolkien-esque) fantasy setting, this document has you covered. Again, with 1d100 tables for each entry.

The Entrees and Food Items Sold in Athas and the Crafting Materials of Athas tables really let the themes and flavor of Dark Sun enter your campaign on a personal level.

Also the Dark Sun Tables pdf would work very well with the Sand Marches by Jesse Heining, below.

The whole thing is really cool.

4. Dark Sun Sand Marches by Jesse Heinig

A free West Marches style campaign setting for Dark Sun that is a whopping 378 pages, The Sand Marches has been several years in development and even contains rules for high level Dark Sun play. Really worth your time to read.

5. Athas.org 

The clearing house for almost all the Dark Sun information you want. Established since 2000, Athas.org hosts a number of articles, a podcast and more free products than you can shake a stick at.

6.  Dark Sun for the Mythras system

Battle Brothers Blazing Deserts art

Here are a handful of links to music on youtube that I find inspirational for writing or thinking about Dark Sun subjects. 

Some of these are from the soundtrack of the video game Battle Brothers’s expansion Blazing Deserts, which are composed by the group Breakdown Epiphanies.

If you have any suggestions to add to this list, please let me know in the comments below.

Dark Sun Soundscape Inspiration

1. Hans Zimmer: Dune Part Two Theme [Extended by Gilles Nuytens]

2. Jo Blankenburg - Enigma

3. Breakdown Epiphanies - Battle Brothers OST - 37 - Snake Mountain

4. Breakdown Epiphanies - Battle Brothers OST - 35 - Al-Anwar's Pride

5. Breakdown Epiphanies - Battle Brothers OST - 36 - The Gilder's Eye

 

Four Mini Book Reviews of Table Top RPGs

 I've found a lot of sales on DriveThruRPG lately, including a couple Deals of the Day, and here is what I have been reading as a result of those tantalizing discounts. 

The Last Caravan

I've purchased and have been reading the Forged in the Dark rpg The Last Caravan. The game is, at base, an Oregon Trail-like game where survivors of an Alien invasion travel West from the East coast (in North America) to avoid increasing winter weather and alien activity to find a sanctuary on the West Coast.

I like it. I like it lots. Currently I have read more than 83 pages out of 212, which is the entirety of the main mechanics and descriptions of the character options and your vehicle rules.  I have specifically avoided the chapter on Aliens to avoid spoilers as I hope to play it eventually.

The "character classes" are called Travelers or Imprints, and while 6 of them share "normal" Blades in the Dark mechanics, two of them, the Innocent and the Good Boi (doggie), are variations upon the "normal" character mechanics theme and thus pretty interesting.   The Innocent is sort of an untested "pre-survivor" who can be the Hero of the group, but has a mechanic that indicates their growth/innocent's nature wearing off as they become a full-fledged survivor.  The Good Boi is a dog, but they have a series of limitations AND unique skills for making them part of the group. Yes, you can go fetch and get cuddles.

I do also like the vehicle rules and detailed pros and cons for making your vehicle unique ... but frankly I want more tables.  More tables for equipment, more detailed rules for combat with maybe Harm types and Armor types (like Fire or resist Fire weapons), and certainly more interesting possible mechanical failures for vehicle cons and more pros to make your vehicle more comfortable/badass/interesting.

The Game Master section (Part Three, The Atlas), has a lot of very specific information about the world and the Regions the players will be traveling through, but I have avoided the specifics of the Regions, because I intend to play the game.

Still, I have read the generic guide to what each Region (1-6) should do narratively on pages 150-151.  These pages suggest details like “Region one should be a tutorial that focuses on the characters and their initial personal problems” and “Introduce at least one Major Faction in Region two.”

The Last Caravan was originally intended to be a video game design document, so there is a great deal of detail for the “canon” Regions and the multiple paths through North America. However, I think that the game could also function well with random generation in each of the six Regions the Last Caravan must traverse.  For example, Region one could have a random table where all the character’s personal problems are delineated, and another random table with small encounters that describe the major themes in the book like introducing alien wildlife, trying to survive the increasing cold, dodgy scavengers, and subjects like that. One could roll on both tables and the Game Master could combine a highlighted personal problem with an encounter for Region one for one game session. 

This idea is a departure from Blades in the Dark and the book specifically, but after reading the book one gets inspired to iterate and build on the framework that The Last Caravan provides.    

So, I think The Last Caravan is good and sets up a nice survival, cozy game but you may require some modification to get more details that suit your table.  The thing is, that will be no trouble since the book generates inspiration in spades.

Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 2

I bought Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 2 a couple of days ago as it was the Deal of the Day on DriveThruRPG for $10. It is normally $25 for this 532-page tome of a West Marches style sandbox location and series of dungeons in the frozen north.  I am 36 pages into it and quite frankly very impressed by the amount of detail and guide to how to run the campaign as the whole thing is designed to be run in OSR, or more specifically the “Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy tabletop role-playing game by Necrotic Gnome.”

You can adapt it easily for any D&D-like you want, but it is easiest for OSR.

So, what do you get in Volume 2? You get an initial introduction to a hidden dwarven underworld, a full hexcrawl description of said gloomy mystic underworld, one urban investigation, and five independent dungeon crawls linked to the underworld. The adventures range from level 5 through 12.  There is a Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 1 which contains the races and worldbuilding of the setting as well as initial adventures from levels 1 through 5.

This book is really fantastic and I will now happily pay $25 for Volume 1 because I am so impressed by it. Volume 2 is worth the money ($25) if you want a hexcrawl with several dungeons.

Specifically, one of the sections I have read deals with a warm home base tavern called “The Beating” with endearing characters and three fully fleshed out unique games of chance that can be played in the tavern, along with a rumor table and regular visitors all with plot hooks.

The Shrike

The Shrike is a brilliantly creative OSR point crawl in a distinctly unique fragment of Hell. The story is, there is a Nameless God impaled through their undying heart on a mountain of iron called The Shrike.  Divine blood, imbued with the ability to generate life from inanimate objects, flows down the spire to its deepest depths in the tempestuous ocean waters below.   Jailor-Devils, Sinners, and creatures animated by the divine blood called Partials, all occupy The Shrike up and down its length; and since food is scarce, weave plots to feed on each other. Yes, cannibalism is a major theme of this sliver of Hell, so content warning there.

The Shrike is a 46 location pointcrawl with 3 keyed dungeons and a procedurally generated depth-crawl.  In addition, there are plenty of interesting tables to use to populate a setting with infernal beings in this 169-page book. 

Creativity is on display in The Shrike. For example, all Devils are shapeshifters, except for the unique horned mask they wear, which serves as their identity.  These masks hold magic powers. Kill one and take it for yourself. Or trade it! For Hell is Capitalism, and the Infernal Economy is detailed with creativity.  You may find gold pieces, grave goods given to the dead by sorrowful mourners; and Umbra, which are the shadows of gold coins destroyed in life. Acquire black bladed knives called Athames which rise in value if they are used to slay a distinguished Devil, or even Black Ledgers of infernal debts and the Scarlet Scales of Mammon himself.

The languages used in Hell even reflect the cultures on The Shrike and have mechanical implications.  Mortals that even attempt to speak Old Infernal find the words blister their mouths as if their tongue has tasted hellfire. Abysmal, the native tongue of The Abyss of Hell, is a slurping, syrupy speech and carries underwater to communicate vast distances. Want to piss of a Devil? Speak in Celestial; the language of the Gods, and those animated by Divine blood. The very utterance of this speech sounds likes nails upon a chalkboard to Devils and drives them into frothing rage.  I have rarely seen a rpg book so cohesive in its tone with every written detail as The Shrike.

The Shrike also has an extensive inspiration and further reading list on page 166. Sure, everyone recognizes Dante’s The Divine Comedy and some of the references to it the author makes; but there are also Sinners that become Husks al la Dark Souls, a reference to China Mieville’s The City & The City in The Great Snubbing between the Gold and Silver Courts of Devils, and my personal favorite reference of Sinner’s Soulstones taken from Wayne Barlowe’s Barlowe's Inferno which is illustrated below.  It has been said, creativity stands on the shoulders of giants, and The Shrike not only wears its inspirations on its sleeve, it weaves them into a truly new and awesome vista of infernal fantasy. 

The Examination from Barlowe's Inferno by Wayne Barlowe

This is a grotesquerie tour-de-force of a very singular vision of Hell and I am glad I bought it.

The Shrike is part of the Bundle of Holding for the OSE Treasures 2 where you get SHRIKE, WYVERN SONGS, TOWER SILVERAXE, MANTICORE, and more for $17.95.  As of the time of this writing, there are only about four more days for this deal.  

The Book of Oblivion (Wraith 20^th Anniversary Edition)

Wraith: the Oblivion is a Storyteller game from the old White Wolf line in which players are one of the Restless Dead; a Wraith with unfinished business that compels them to continue to exist in the Underworld.  The Book of Oblivion is a sourcebook for Wraith, the 20th Anniversary Edition, and frankly I think they should have called this 130-page book, Wraith: the Expansion.

I am a long-term old World of Darkness player who started in the 1990s and Wraith was one of the first core books I bought. Given that, and my love for the macabre and wildly creative world painted in funeral greys and blacks of Wraith, I will do my best to explain the thematic lexicon of the Underworld to a wide audience.

The Book of Oblivion contains a hodgepodge of topics that expand on many of the core book subjects, including: four additional Dark Kingdoms (Wraith civilizations), Shadows (internal Wraith antagonists), Spectres (external Wraith antagonists), Soulforging (making useful stuff in the Deadlands), how Wraiths react to mass tragedies in the Skinlands (real world), more details about the Labyrinth (basically Wraith Hell where the Spectres and worse live) and more.  

But what if I don’t play Wraith? How is The Book of Oblivion useful?

Although The Book of Oblivion’s utility is primarily for Wraith specifically and the World of Darkness in general, the Shadows and Spectres section are great inspiration for undead antagonists or the psychological profiles of evil bad guys who are more than just cartoon characters. In Wraith, the Shadow is the self-destructive, Oblivion-focused and just plain “evil” mirror of the heroic ghost character (Wraith).  Given that, there are 10 distinct additional Shadow archetypes that describe the psychology and motivations of truly self-destructive personalities that could be useful for GMs of say a more traditional fantasy d20 game. What ideas on how competent shock troops of bad guys who serve an existential evil would function? Go to the Spectre chapter, which has nasty tricks described in detail that Spectres use as they go about their dark work.  Want new unique evil-derived magical powers? The Dark Arcanoi chapter is for you. 

The Dark Kingdoms section is more for World of Darkness players and those interested in the dark mirror of different culture’s afterlives. These chapters could also be used as inspiration for funereal otherworlds or pocket dimensions in a fantasy game too however. On display are the Wraith-coded fantasy afterlife areas for Africa, India, North America, South America and Haiti.

Soulforging is a small section describing how Wraiths make practical objects in the Underworld; the Labyrinth section introduces new ideas for how the Game Master can scare their players, even if they are playing dead people. There is a nice but small section on using body horror and unexpected settings for Wraith Hell that might be useful for other horror systems. 

The section on The Tempest (terrifying Wraith weather essentially) and how Wraiths react to mass tragedies in the mortal world are mostly of use to Wraith Game Masters who want to know how the Dead preposition themselves to interfere with the doom of a population or reap souls that will inevitably come across to the land of the dead once the mass casualty event hits.

In conclusion, The Book of Oblivion is mostly for Wraith and World of Darkness Game Masters, and occasionally useful for fantasy Dungeon Masters with a macabre streak.  Because of the vast diversity of topics, the book feels jumbled.  Compare this to The Shrike which has a very singular and cohesive view of a fragment of Hell, and thus that book feels more complete and focused.

Things on my Radar

 It’s been a while.  Here are a list of games and authors that I am either actively reading or actively pursuing.  I do not have enough information to review any of these products yet, but they have all piqued my interest. 

Games

Holdout- a solitaire, roll-and-write resource management game in which you must grow your wasteland settlement, deal with mishaps that drain your resources and daily bandit raids and achieve certain objectives to win.  

I am interested in this game, because I wanted to examine simple and fun resource management games, what makes them tick, and how they can be iterated off of.

Holdout is by Humble Bard Games. $5. This is a print and play game. A video overview is here.

Dangerous Space- A sci-fi solo game that is published by PNP Arcade and designed by Jason Greeno and Jason Tagmire.

The description for Dangerous Space says: 

"Dangerous Space is a dungeon crawl experience in futuristic starships.

This solo, roll & write game has a tactical emphasis on dice management and careful placement. 

With puzzle-optimizing challenges combined with a hero tech tree, you’ll find yourself racing the clock, dodging enemy laser blasts and confronting some deep space terrors.”

The Dangerous Space Core Set is $4.

Stoneburner- I’ve been reading through this game. Stoneburner is about being a Space Dwarf and inheriting a space mine in an asteroid that is infested by demons and worse.  It takes its inspiration from Deep Rock Galactic, Doom, Dwarf Fortress, The Expanse and Firefly. In addition, it claims it is “solo friendly.”

Mechanically, to perform a check you roll a skill die, or a die from an item.  The roll result of 1-2 indicates you outright fail, or you may succeed with a major complication. A roll of 3-4 means you succeed in your endeavor, however there is a minor complication.  A roll of 5+ means you greatly succeed, and the higher the roll result the better. 

Now after you use a skill or item, your die for that skill or item decreases by one step, (ie 1d6 turns into a 1d4).  Skills cannot go lower than a 1d4.  Dwarven classes have three skills: Strength, Dexterity and Willpower.  These skills may vary from 1d4 to 1d8, depending on starting class. 

Stoneburner is created by Fari RPG’s, specifically by René-Pier Deshaies. It is $15. 

Bandit Republic- The Bandit Republic OSR hexcrawl from itch.io is set in an alternate history 1925 where the Republic of Jelenia broke off from Poland and the characters are all deserters from the Army of Jelenia. There are artillery, radios, soldiers and spies from East Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia; guns galore, witchers, leshy and other supernatural oddities along with revolutionaries and communists.

The system is based on the Wolves Upon the Coast hexcrawl's system. Bandit Republic was created by Tom Mecredy who some of you may remember as the author of the Napoleonic naval OSR hexcrawl Shot and Splinters that I liked so much I designed two additional random tables for.  

 

Bandit Republic is currently 50% off through 1/30/24. Normally it is $20 as of January 2024. As the hexcrawl is further developed, the price will increase.  

Over War: Monarch Edition-  

UPDATE **Kickstarter is LIVE Through Feb 15th** 

Patreon post link about Over War: Monarch Edition here. 

Over War: Monarch Edition is a tactical tabletop rpg (inspired by Fire Emblem, Yggdra Union, Langrisser, and the works of Yasumi Matsuno) soon to be a Kickstarter (possibly in February) by author Richard Kelly and expanded by Blackoath Entertainment.  Blackoath was responsible for Across a Thousand Dead Worlds which I enjoyed reading and wrote a review of.  So, expect the Blackoath touch of a solo mode and tons of interesting random tables with Over War: Monarch Edition. 

Here is the blurb that got me excited about Over War: Monarch Edition from the Patreon post.

“But how does it play, I hear you ask? Well, players maintain a warcamp, unlock new units and supplies between missions, then take to the field, relying on the types of characters they've recruited and the formation they've put them in to carry them through battles.

Missions take place on hex maps covered in unique terrain types. Cities can be conquered, swamps can be slogged through, units can take to the air to avoid the effects of terrain or stand on mountains and fire downward into foes for extra damage. Throughout all this, the emphasis is on keeping things simple and keeping choices meaningful. Dice are rarely rolled. Attacks typically hit. And good formations, tactical choices, and resource spending carry the day.”

Want to see how the original Over War plays? There are FREE Community Copies of Over War: The Night Comes Down on the itch.io page. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to get it. 

Books

Mark Samuels; The Age of Decayed Futurity- I’m sorry to say I first heard of Mark Samuels and his weird and Lovecraftian fiction upon an announcement of his passing on r/WeirdLit. The blog Wormwoodiana had a very nice tribute for Mark Samuels, specifically saying that he was a passionate advocate for Machen, Lovecraft and Ligotti. I am looking forwards to reading some of Mark Samuels’ “best” short stories as collected in The Age of Decayed Futurity once I get my hands on a physical copy.   

Premee Mohamed; No One Will Come Back For Us - From her bio on Amazon, Premee Mohamed is “a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta.” Her science degrees are in molecular genetics and environmental science. 

I recently downloaded the Kindle sample of Premee’s book No One Will Come Back For Us. It contained two and a half short stories: Below the Kirk, Below the Hill; Instructions; and The Evaluator.  In Below the Kirk, Below the Hill; and the section of The Evaluator that was present in the Kindle sample, Premee Mohamed creates a mood of a normal world but with pinpricks of oddity that she pulls on to lead the reader through mystery and horror indicating that what these people live in, is not our world, or if it was; something very alien has happened to their surroundings and they are trying to cope.  I’m very eager to continue reading The Evaluator to see how the story develops.  I’ll report back if she is one of the authors who also treads the path of cosmic horror in her tales.