Cult of the Sky Titans

By Into the Weird Blue Yonder
Self Published
Knave
Level 1

A blight creeps across the land. Trees blacken and die. People disappear in the night, only to return taken by madness and rot. The spirits cry out for heroes.

This is a deceptively dense 36 page adventure that uses about eleven pages to describe nineteen rooms in some cultist caves … during caveman times. It is doing almost everything right, only getting a bit long in some encounters and needing a little more work in the appendices to make them more accessible. Weirdly niche, though. 

The designer has a supplement, Fire&Stone, that I assume describes neolithic roleplaying for Knave or some such, and this adventure is meant for that. Hence the weirdly niche comment I made. I’m going forward with a review though since we can always dump in a lost valley setting or some such; I’m not sure anything here precludes that. 

The setup here is that a hunter gatherer tribe has returned to a certain place. Near the mountain where they bury their dead, and the once lush valley is now not. Or, as one of the hooks puts it “A party member knew this place in their youth. It was once lush and verdant.” I think that’s a pretty decent hook. Simple, Moody, to be sure, and a pretty decent pretext. The adventure outlines three “camps” near each other. They each have a little bit of information and the third one has a VERY sick child. People have started disappearing. Once has come back, the child. Let’s see what the adventure has to say … “A bibilious child reeking of death, covered in  failed poultices. His veins are black, eyes and hands crusted over with black tears. He lies in  the dirt; writhing, screaming in hoarse tongues.” Yes, that would seem to be a fucking problem, ey? Great little fucking description. Writhing. Screaming in hoarse tongues. Fuck yeah! There’s some showing instead of telling!

The designer has a knack for this. The NPC’s are pretty well described, terse, but with explicit Wants, Needs, Knows sections. A couple of little vignettes in the camp that bring a sense of unease to things. This is married with a kind of omen table that has something like “a single fish, no more. It is filled with black glass shards.” Well that’s not cool, eh? And we don’t have a perfect society here, we’ve also got a vain woman and charlatan fortune teller. “You shall meet a tall dark stranger with exquisite feet.” The reason for the season is not forgotten in this adventure, with the designer inserting these little moments here and there. It’s got this excellent vibe, of a worried tribe. The omens are appropriate and help build the setting.

Ok, so, old dude who tended the graves up in the mountain burial place is dead, so, no help from him. Up you go.  “A thick fog shrouds this rocky clearing. The icy bottom layer soaks into your legs and conceals something that darts between the rocks.” Pretty chill, eh? That’s a good ominous description, especially for the entrance to the caverns. All of the rooms start with a little thing like that, impressions, but tied in to the actual room elements further described below. They are pretty decent, being terse, giving good impressions, and yet also having the elements you need, or that the players should be paying attention to, to ask further questions of the DM. It’s not perfect perfection, but it hits pretty well most of the time. This knack for using descriptions appropriately extends to creatures “Scars healed and reopened too many times crust on a wretched face, converging on a malformed mouth and a bloodshot beady eye. Infected piercings cover all else.” Hey man, aftercare instructions, yeah? “Wants; Bloody violent entertainment. Failing that, entertainment.” Me too buddy! (Both the sequel and gameshow version of Squid Game are abhorrent misreadings of the theme. I’ll watch them anyway.)

I note that the rooms start with a little description. Then they go to “Connections” the dreaded Bryce “where the exits go” text. But, in this case “To the west two rows of black bloody  footprints flank a red-black smear leading to …” and “To the north the occasional glimmer can be seen from …” and so on. A vibe, a hint, a decent but terse description. Those are exits I can get behind! 

For interactivity … we’ve got some fuck around and find out shit going on. Fuck with the deep pool and get The Evil Eye and maybe summon up an abomination from the depths. Wade through chest high water and maybe kick loose something from bottom … that maybe you should chase after. Some decent amount of stabbing, and/or rescuing people with a surprising amount of potential talking. Some psychedelics and environment features add to the mix. And the weirdness. A cavern, with thick rolling mist and a suffocating stench of blood. Putrid mists and a strange stillness. In the center sit two cultists, eyes and hands locked together, a cord tightly wound around their hands, breathing incredibly subtly … with one appearing pregnant. Ok man, are we trying to save them or just executing them? I know what I WANT to do and what I SHOULD do. The strength here is that the should competes against the want, the preamble camp and so on helping to build empathy. The whole thing just builds and builds and lyrics on top of each other to create more than the sum.

There’s a turn of phrase here and there that isn’t great. In some spot we’re told that this is where cultists try and funnel intruders … which is really something that should be in a general notes section and not in a room description. It’s deceptively dense for an eleven page 19 room adventure. And the rooms can also sometimes get quite dense and/or full. Too much, I’d say, for any one location given the formatting used. And not just the page long central room. The formatting IS working well to help locate and run things, but it’s WAY leaning to thick side.

This thing is just full of great things. It’s doing just about everything right in the way it does it, and I think that excuses a little bit of the content being a bit flat or samey. I have no idea how you would use this in a “normal” game, but its certainly worth the ol college try, perhaps with a restating and a bit more treasure to match your chosen level range.

This is $2.50 at itch.io. The demo is just the map. And the sample page is white text on black background … which is not present in the adventure at all. I think, though, otherwise, that’s a good sample of the room content of the adventure.

https://weirdandblue.itch.io/sky-titans