War's End Review: Act Two

Having been given numerous hints that they should seek out a Cyberpapal witch by the name of Roxanne D'Aramis because she might know more about what's going on, and that she's probably going to be the main feature at a Cyberpapal barbeque if not rescued, Our Heroes make their way to Boston and Act Two.

The immediate problem with this Act is that it has no beginning; the players are given nothing to work with other than "she's in Boston". So where do they start looking? The Act does recognize this by saying that the first few Scenes can be done in any order. But each Scene does require the players to go somewhere specific, yet there's nothing at the very beginning of the Act that gives the players any leads to these areas (other than the obvious one, breaking into the Cyberpapal cathedral and seeing what they know about Roxanne.) Unless you have players familiar with Boston who know that you can find people hanging out at Boston Commons (a park) or Kenmore Square (a lot of bars and nightclubs I guess) they're pretty much stuck without any options. It would have been nice to have a streetwise skill check or something like that mentioned as a means by which characters can figure out where to go to find information.

Perhaps anticipating that no one would figure out any other source of information, the cathedral is the first Scene of the Act. There is really nothing here but a description of the interior of the cathedral and writeups of the Cyberpapists inside, the only way to get the information will be to break in (the front doors are apparently locked 24 hours a day) and make your way into the Church Police barracks where they keep their computers. Unless of course you have a Connection card, then you can just ask the Archbishop and he'll tell you what you want to know. Of course with the front doors permanently locked you'll still have to break in to speak with him....

Okay, maybe I'm being a little harsh, just because it says the front doors are locked doesn't mean that they're locked 24 hours a day, but a little bit of text concerning getting into the cathedral without breaking and entering would have been nice. But hey, the module says that the Cyberpacy and the cyberpunk genre is supposed to be about having an "in-your-face" attitude, why bother with anything other than the necessary information to run a fight?

Oh, and you can forget about getting the information by making a datarun in the GodNet, apparently this is the only Cyberpapal installation in the world that doesn't use virtual reality for anything, you can't break into the cathedral's VX construct because it doesn't have one nor do you interface with the GodNet when you finally reach their computers, you just make a couple of science (computers) skill checks to get all the information you need. To add insult to injury, its more difficult getting information out of the Kanawa Corporation computer system that shows up in Scene Four! So much for the superiority of higher technology!

The only other thing there is to say about Scene One is that with the exception of four cygoyles, every single person inside the cathedral is Possibility-Rated. How many people are inside? Two dozen Church Police, twenty Cyberpriests and the Archbishop for a total of 45 P-Rated people waiting to engage the PCs in combat. I suppose as an attempt to balance out this inequality no one is armed with anything larger than a GodMeeter (DV 20) but when you have two dozen people shooting at you and 21 people throwing miracles at you I don't think anything bigger is going to be required! Just think how many P-Points you can get your players to waste in this battle (the Cyberpapal forces have a total of 252 P-Points to use against the PCs)!

So what kind of information does the party get out of the Cyberpapal computers? They can find out immediately where Roxanne is (captured by the Church and taken to Salem) and thus skip over half of this Act by going to Salem and Scene Five or waste their time with clues that lead them to Kenmore Square (Scene Two), Boston Commons (Scene Three) or a Bank of Japan owned by Kanawa (Scene Four).

Now I ask you: the players have just found out everything they need. Why would they bother checking out any of those other places? This makes absolutely no sense (especially in light of the fact that there is nothing else related to Roxanne to be learned in any of those Scenes.) Is this meant to be an "in-your-face" hint that the players should go through all the Scenes of the module even if they don't have to? All hail the linear plot, none shall deviate!

Oh, before I start in on Scene Two I want to backtrack a bit to the introductory material for the Act. It is apparently common knowledge that the Cyberpapacy has expanded out of Canada and taken over parts of New England, including Boston and the surrounding territory. Yet this has no impact on everyday life, apparently Americans have become so blase about being invaded by other realities that no one gives a damn, no one is opposed to the Cyberpapal presence, in fact the government has apparently given the Cyberpapacy "a wide breadth of discretion to act in their own defense and the greater good of the people."

Excuse me? All of a sudden everyone actually believes Malraux's story about being here to help Earth from the horrors of the Possibility Wars, that he's not one of the bad guys responsible for the horrors that suddenly showed up in France, Canada and now the US at the same time as the Cyberpapacy? Boy, the propaganda masters of Saxon's Europa cosm have nothing on Malraux's spin doctors!

I suppose at its heart this is just part of WEG's overall problem with having the world continue along as if nothing was happening - why should any government in the world passively accept the aquisition of new territory by a High Lord? Hell, shouldn't the Law of Suspicion make people untrustworthy of anyone new, like the Cyberpapacy when it's just invaded? Remember, the WL doesn't say that the Church is exempt, just that people in authority have a smaller penalty, and the Cyberpapacy isn't even in charge of Boston so they'd have the full penalty applied against them!

Assuming that the players have either figured out that the local nightlife scene would be a good source of information or for some stupid reason they come here after learning about it from Scene One, the players get into action immediately be seeing a bunch of cybered punks chasing an attractive woman (get your Romance cards out boys, its an unimportant female NPC!) Rescuing the woman will provide a lead to the Commons (Scene Three) but that's it. To get any more information the players will have to go to one of the nightclubs (specifically a club called The Rat but I suppose any club will suffice.)

Oh, I have to mention that the eight punks and the girl are all Possibility-Rated. Damn but they weren't kidding when they said Core Earth produced a lot of P-Rateds, and I think all of them have gravitated into this module!

Minor aside: Maybe it's just me but a P-Rated Core Earther with three adds in a magic skill, five adds in arcane knowledges and three spells is not exactly someone I'd describe as having "unremarkable" magical abilities. Sure, she (the girl being chased by the punks) probably isn't much compared to an Ayslish P-Rated mage or any PC with magical skills but it's hardly "unremarkable" (especially since we have to assume that she's managed to pick this stuff up either in the short time the Cyberpapal reality has been in New England or that she picked up all this while under CE reality!)

Where was I? Oh yeah, the PCs go to The Rat in search of more information. Ever read an AD&D module that included a tavern? You guessed it, there's a list of rumors (true and false) for the players to weasel out of the nondescript NPCs in The Rat. There are only a few useful rumors and one of those just repeats the information the girl gave the PCs at the beginning of the Scene! Another points back to Scene One while one is another unsubtle lead to Scene Four (why do I say it's unsubtle? Who's going to tell you that there's a Bank of Japan branch in Boston's financial district as a rumor? Gee, a foreign bank office in the financial district, imagine that!)

And in case you didn't get your fill of bar fights in the first Act, there are some NPC punks conveniently provided to throw at your players if they need yet another pointless battle. At least these punks are only slightly cybered and (gasp!) they're not P-Rated.

Oh, there are a couple of corporate ninja hanging around The Rat because the club's owner is involved in the black market but unless the characters go looking for ninja or black market items they'll probably never notice them since the ninja don't do anything but spy on the owner. So why are they even here? Why, they're yet another unsubtle hint that the party should investigate the Bank of Japan in Scene Four! Sheesh.

One last thing concerning this Scene, if you're not a tough character you had better stay out of the mosh pit, the damage value assigned to moshing is higher than the damage value of most pistols and melee weapons! I get the impression that John Terra doesn't think too highly of moshers.

Okay, onto Scene Three, Boston Gardens. This is supposedly a good place to find new arrivals to Boston (I guess no one stays in motels anymore) so it is a logical place to look for Roxanne or people who might have met her. But that's not the focus of this Scene (that wouldn't be "in-your-face"!) No, the focus of this Scene is a fight with Thratchen and a dozen techno-demons (yes, the Thratchen, once regent of Orrorsh and now Demon Prince of Tharkold. Just to make sure everyone knows that, Thratchen will remind the PCs of this in its monologue.)

And like Scene One that's really all there is to say about the Scene, there's a big fight. Oh, you can ask one of Thratchen's victims what he was looking for (Roxanne) and you do get to make a streetwise roll at the end of the Scene to represent actually going around and asking people about Roxanne but that's tacked onto the end of the Scene almost as an afterthought. No, the only real reason the PCs are here is to fight Thratchen and find out that Tharkold is also interested in Roxanne (Roxanne is obviously a very smart girl, she fled to the one realm where there isn't a High Lord looking for her!) But if they do talk to people they find out that the Cyberpapacy grabbed her and that they Papacy has taken her and others up to Salem.

That's right, if the PCs come here before Scene One they can get the exact same information with just one simple streetwise roll, no need to pile up 40+ corpses by fighting your way through the cathedral to their computers! Okay, you do have to fight Thratchen and a dozen techno-demons but I think that's probably an easier fight than the 45 or so P-Rated Cyberpapists....

Why is it an easier fight? Because the techno-demons are actually Ords, which surprises the hell out of me considering how many P-Rated street punks we've had so far in the module. (But don't worry, they make up for it in Act Four with close to 100 P-Rated Tharkoldu....)

And once again WEG gets Thratchen's writeup wrong in a module (the first time around, City of Demons, was much worse though, that writeup wasn't even updated to match information given in the Tharkold sourcebook.) I am a little sensitive on this matter since I was the one who wrote up the revised version of Thratchen that WEG published (in Infiniverse Update volume 2) but for some reason they left out here the majority of his Demon Prince abilities (gee, just the entire purpose behind City of Demons, Thratchen's quest to become a Demon Prince again) as well as making the mistake of thinking that Status Armor (the one ability they did keep) is actual armor rather than the ability to exceed the Maximum Toughness Value of armor (meaning that to get the +5 they give Thratchen as armor he has to be wearing armor, which he isn't.)
One thing they kept in that they don't make any use of ,nor do they explain it for those who haven't seen his writeup in IU#2 is his cybernetic Mem-Sift (the brain-sucking thing he did in the original novels). You'd think if he's trying to get information out of people in Cyberpapal reality, people who probably have j-jacks or epiphaneurs, he'd use something like the Mem-Sift. Of course since the Mem-Sift wasn't in the Tharkold SB a lot of people might not even know what it is and waste a lot of time digging through the SB trying to find out what it is and what it does.

I guess you could say I'm annoyed by the utter throwaway nature of this Scene and the waste of a character like Thratchen (he does not reappear in the module after this Scene.) The PCs aren't even given the chance to kill him as a substitute for there being no important Cyberpapal characters to fight in this Act, because Thratchen will run away as soon as he gets seriously hurt and his wing of techno-demons will run interference so that he can escape. Whee, what fun! Of course that's assuming that a bunch of Ord techno-demons will be able to last more than a few rounds against a group of PCs that apparently are supposed to be tough enough to take on 40+ P-Rated Cyberpapists, Thratchen may not have anyone to run interference for him if he doesn't run away very quickly....

In Thratchen's writeup they remind us that the Gaunt Man can see and hear everything Thratchen does or encounters because of an occult ritual. I'm presuming that everyone needed to be reminded of this because I don't remember ever hearing about it before. It's not in The Gaunt Man Returns, he uses Wicked to observe Thratchen in that module. It's not mentioned in Thratchen's writeup in IU#2. I guess it might have been in City of Demons but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Thratchen hasn't appeared in any other product since the Gaunt Man's release so I can't think of anywhere else it might have been mentioned.

Okay, with that out of the way, Scene Four! Scene Four is a complete waste of time. It has no bearing whatsoever on Roxanne or the Cyberpapacy's activities in New England and there should be no reason for this Scene to exist much less have it suggested repeatedly in the previous Scenes that the players should check out the Bank of Nippon (ie, this scene.)

I suppose this Scene is here simply to provide a token Nippon Tech presence in this module, or at least a token battle against Nipponese forces (20 MarSec guards, a dozen ninja). Considering the rest of this module it's surprising that the MarSec guards are Ords instead of all being P-Rated. Of course each one of them is armed with a chain gun if the party encounters them at night....

There is a little Nippon-related information that can be retrieved from the bank's computer system but since it has no bearing on this adventure and Nippon (along with all the rest of the invaders) will be gone after this adventure, what's the point of it? And as I noted earlier, getting the good information out of this computer system is harder than cracking the Cyberpapal system in Scene One. But at least you don't have to kill 40+ people to get to it....

Once the players finish this Scene they either have to go back to a preceeding Scene (since this one won't help them locate Roxanne) or go on to Scene Five (which they should have done as soon as they found out Roxanne had been taken to Salem.)

Scene Five starts out telling us a bit belatedly that it can be used at any point in the Act, such as when the players are driving around Boston. But given the nature of what occurs in this Scene I don't think having it happen in the middle of a major metropolitan city is all that likely, out in the middle of nowhere on the road between Boston and Salem makes a lot more sense.

Like Scene Four this one has nothing to do with the main focus of the Act. But at least this one doesn't pretend that it does.

Fortunately for Our Heroes they don't have to figure this one out, the murderer is lurking nearby waiting to attack. The killer is Randolph "munchkin" Chapman, a former Spartan who's a cybered, martial artist lunatic with enough weapons to equip an entire party much less one character. Oh yes, and he's also carrying an eternity shard that has the special purpose of 'killing Possibility-Rated individuals', the Sword of Vlad the Impaler.

That also happens to be Randolph's purpose in life, to kill P-Rateds. Why? He's nuts, does he need an excuse? But just in case you think he does, the Gaunt Man has been using the Occult to plant dreams in Randolph's mind that push him to do this. Gee, what a coincidence then that he happens to be in this part of the world! (And it apparently is just a coincidence, there's no mention of the Gaunt Man leading him into the path of the players.)

So anyway, Randolph waits for the right moment and then attacks one of the players, running away if things turn against him. Given the levels of combat these players have already been through in this Act already Randolph shouldn't be much of a challenge for the entire group but one-on-one he could be dangerous (primarily because of his cybernetic arm and Vlad's Sword, he's got a DV of 27 with that combination.)

The module suggests that Randolph should get away so that he has an opportunity to come back later on and harass the players again and while it's cheesy I have to agree, though for different reasons - I just find the idea of a one-shot, one-Scene villain carrying around an eternity shard too ridiculous for words, at the very least he should be a Nemesis or something like that. Of course the module then goes on to have Randolph show up at the end of Act Three and fight to the death so I guess they meant that he should get away so he can come back and harass the players one more time before they kill him. Sheesh.

Once Randolph has been dealt with, the players reach Salem and Scene Six. In a stunning reversal to the attitude displayed in all of the previous Scenes, the players are meant to get through this by talking rather than piling up the bodies of the NPCs they encounter.

The basic premise of the Scene is quite simple; the people of Salem and surrounding communities have been whipped into a frenzied state of paranoia by the Cyberpapacy and a mob has assembled, on its way to the hangings the Cyberpapacy is getting ready to conduct. Since it's likely (though not a given) that a few of the PCs will not look like fine, upstanding citizens the mob will get ugly and turn on them as witches if the situation isn't defused.

I have no problem with this situation. I do have a problem with the suggested way for the players to handle this: turn all of their weapons over to the local police and allow themselves to be taken to the town square so the Inquisition can sort it all out after the hangings.

Now you're probably thinking that these are Church Police or at least local police who are Cyberpapal sympathizers. Nope. The module says that the police are not under the sway of the Cyberpapacy but in order to keep the peace are not only allowing mob rule to control the situation they're not even going to try and stop the hangings! I ask you, how many PCs will be willing to trust policemen who behave like this? Hell, letting the Inquisition "sort things out" after they've hanged nine possibly innocent people should be enough to set most players against the police and you know what's likely to happen next.

The module optimistically assumes that if the PCs engage the mob and police in combat it will take more than six rounds for them to win the fight (reinforcements show up after six and ten rounds of combat.) Characters who prevailed against the 45 P-Rated Cyberpapists shouldn't even break a sweat against 40 Ords armed with baseball bats and six cops with pistols, even if they're trying to avoid killing anyone so I don't see it taking that long. (Of course it's quite remarkable that reinforcements can respond within one minute of the start of combat, they must be just a few blocks away when the fighting starts....)

Anyway, the module assumes that the players make it to Scene Seven without resorting to mass combat; there is no text set aside to handle how the crowd, police and Cyberpapal forces in the town square would react to the party if they had instigated a fight in the previous Scene. But given the level of opposition the PCs will face and the likelyhood that the PCs will be unable to avoid it I'm assuming that the module assumes the PCs will arrive with their weapons, since there's no mention of whether or not the police in the previous Scene brought them to the square or not. If the PCs are there without their weapons they better have a lot of hidden abilities (magic, miracles, psionics, martial arts, grenades hidden in uncomfortable places, etc) or they're in a lot of trouble. But if the only way to peacefully reach this Scene is to give up their weapons in the previous Scene how are they supposed to have them for this Scene?

When Our Heroes arrive they see the Cyberpapacy has a big bonfire going (for burning books, records, RPGs and the like) and on a scaffold nine people with nooses already around their necks. In addition to an even larger mob of paranoid Salemites there are twenty P-Rated Church Police, six P-Rated Hospitallers on P-Rated chargers, eight P-Rated Inquisitors and a P-Rated Cardinal. After the cardinal gives a rousing "what do we do to witches?" speech the situation becomes even more ludicrous with the arrival of a fifth planting Cyberpapal gospog. (But at least gospogs aren't P-Rated!)

The players basically have two choices: give a rousing speech of their own and convince the mob that the Papacy is wrong, in which case they 'only' have to fight the Cyberpapal forces, or go straight into battle in which case they have to fight the mob as well as the Papal forces. Well, I suppose it's not as bad as 45 P-Rated Papal opponents, even if it is a Dramatic Scene.

The players may get the idea to free the people on the gallows during the fight, since one of them appears to be a Mystery Man and in addition to Roxanne it's possible that a couple others (the Ayslish Dwarf for example) may actually be magic-users and could lend a hand. Well, they'd be partially right; Roxanne does have one or two useful but minor combat spells but the guy who looks like a Mystery Man isn't, he's a Mystery Man washout by the name of Destructo Don.

I really shouldn't be so hard on Don, he's actually a fun character for the GM to run (he's loud, pompous in that Good Guy way, and his only combat ability is to fly head-first into people with his gigantic pointed helmet.) There's just one problem with him and that's his writeup. I complained about it to WEG the first time it was published (probably somewhere in Infiniverse) and even complained about some of its problems to John Terra himself but none of the problems appear to have been corrected.

The most glaring problem is that we aren't given a speed value for his Flight power, just the damage value if he hits something. Don has a Strength of 15 yet no Super-Attribute power, Nile characters are only allowed up to one attribute of 14, not 15. His metal helmet is over two feet in length, maybe he needs all that super-strength to hold it up or something. And just how slow must he be flying for an eight-foot missle (ie, him and his helmet) to have a DV of only 14? Why doesn't he just fly up to someone and weild his helmet as a club, he'd do a lot more damage that way!

Well, enough Don bashing. Obviously it's assumed that the PCs will defeat the Papal forces and rescue Roxanne. They're bound to be disappointed by the information she gives them. Instead of giving them some information on what the Gaunt Man is up to she just provides an easily-deciphered clue that leads to Act Three in New Orleans. And while the Storm Knights may not know it any player who's even picked up the Orrorsh SB will know that they're going to have to deal with Basjas and Sabathina in the next Act, the clue is that blatent.

Roxanne's second clue is a bit vaguer and I had to search through Act Three twice to figure out what the heck she was talking about. Roxanne's clue is that a one-eyed ruler has taken refuge in the city. So she's talking about a person, right? Of course not! She't talking about a nightclub, isn't it obvious? (Actually it is obvious because the club's name is the One-Eyed King, but I was looking for character names and missed it the first time.)

The characters are first teleported to Aysle, where the armies led by Towlyn and the Warrior of the Dark are engaged in final combat. Naturally the players appear on the scene just as Towlyn encounters the Warrior of the Dark and are in time to see Drakacanus vanish just like the Kefertiri Idol did in Act One.
In a slight twist from Act One, the players aren't just observing, they're actually there because the WotD acknowledges their presence and has a dragon attack them while she deals with Towlyn. Of course Towlyn refuses any assistance from the PCs, and given that she has script immunity doesn't need it anyway. As soon as the PCs defeat the dragon she of course defeats the WotD but spares her life.

Warning, incredibly stereotypical resolution ahead! The WotD naturally waits for Towlyn to turn her back, draws a dagger and attacks, but of course Towlyn turns in time to deflect the attack and behead the WotD with a single swing of her sword. I was fully expecting Towlyn to next sweep the beautiful princess into her mighty arms and ride off into the sunset next but since there wasn't a princess around it didn't happen.

Oh yeah, as you might remember Towlyn has faced an evil version of herself before, back in the original trilogy. Now correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it described as an Ayslish creature, a Spectral Knight maybe? Then why does Towlyn refer to it as an Orrorshan Horror here? Surely she's not referring to the doppleganger from that one Queenswrath adventure?

The second High Lord downfall is Jean Malraux, and this one the players don't even get to materialize in Avignon and watch what happens, they're just told that "they're aware of what happened".

But it's not the God Malraux expects, it's the Core Earth Judeo-Christian God, who shows Malraux 'The Truth' and the error of his ways, essentially converting him to some form of CE Christianity. Conveniently enough, Malraux was scheduled to make a major address to his flock just moments after Ebenscrux vanished so he takes this opportunity to start telling everyone that he's been wrong and the Core Earthers have it right. Naturally enough the Inquisition doesn't look on this too kindly and they haul Malraux off for "reeducation".

And what was this Truth that Malraux was shown? That Ebenscrux manipulated the reality of Magna Verita to put the Avignon Church in control of the world, and that ever since then the worship of the faithful was not directed towards their God but to Ebenscrux, and all Papal miracles flowed from the Darkness Device, not an actual deity.

Now why this revelation would bother Malraux so much is a mystery to me, it's not like the man was a worshipful, god-fearing Christian even before he became High Lord much less afterwards when the CP SB pretty much says Malraux worships his DD more than God. I guess the purity of God's wonderfulness put him back on the path of righteousness or something....

I'll leave the implications of a Darkness Device being able to replace God for others to discuss, that's one of those areas of discussion I said I'd keep away from. I'll just say that I don't believe it, maybe Malraux and his inner circle worshipped the DD as God but not the average Joe in Magna Verita.

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