Review: Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss

Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss is the Mage: the Awakening line's book on the Abyss as well as a collection of sample entities and manifestations for use in building stories and chronicles. Like most of my favorite books from White Wolf/Onyx Path, it is the grab bag of game seeds that I really enjoy. There are so many great ideas here to mine, use, and connect into Chronicles.

But first let us look at the initial sections of the book.

Introduction

Like most introductions for the World of Darkness books, this one outlines the book and supplies a number of fiction and nonfiction works to use as reference or inspiration. Oddly it doesn't include the usual description of theme and mood.

The main item of interest here is the system for researching the Abyssal manifestation, one that I've used for many other research tasks in the World of Darkness. Basically the game mechanic breaks up the information into flavorful chunks, one of which is distributed for every few successes the character gets on an extended research roll.

Chapter 1

This chapter discusses how different groups view the Abyss, provides a history of the abyss and its interactions with the Fallen world, discusses ways the Abyss enters fallen world, and describes some methods of how to fight it. We get advice on how to use the Abyss in your Chronicle and bringing its brand of horror to your game. The book also provides some information on Scelesti as well though I personally would refer people to Left Hand Path instead.

Honestly to me, this chapter is one of those you read once and probably never again. The book does provide good advice but referencing it is slow.

The Manifestations

Now for the meat of the book. This section gives us 23 Abyssal manifestations from monsters and contagions to spells and tools. Each manifestation includes a short piece of introductory fiction, several variant names, details on how it enters the world, what it does once in our world, how someone might to banish it, what the typical mortal response is to it, and several story seeds involving it.

Here are the manifestations briefly:

• Abyssal Assistant: this helpful tool drives its user to create more and more outlandish inventions while draining the life force of everything around them.Thus it creates a source for impossible devices and an unnatural blight.
• Abyssal Spiders: a personal favorite, these tiny spiders infest people's brains and induce them to spread the plague and/or do immoral acts. At the same time they create a psychic static that draws their preferred hosts, other supernaturals, near. As they spread they leave dead victims and unnatural beings prone to blackouts and dark deeds.
• Anumerus: this entity controls numbers, creating bad luck, vanishing fortunes, and other number related troubles. Not terribly Abyssal.
• Crossways: this manifestation takes the form of a looping path with an invisible entrance. Those who enter find the world getting stranger and darker, a nightmare realm where the only escape is find the original entrance. But by then it may be too late.
• Dark Angel Aphasia: this magical mental illness starts with a text or recording that fascinates the victim. Then it slowly removes their ability to communicate via written and spoken language, eventually rendering them either unable to communicate with the outside world or a vegetable. Plus it is contagious!
• Electric Animator: this living lightning infests local electric grids causing modern devices to act up in a poltergeist fashion. Its pranks while dangerous don't become malicious until people interfere with its plans.
• False Demense: Supernal magic passes through the Abyss. Sometimes this confuses the Abyss and it tries to enforce the higher laws of reality on the Fallen World. Magic works well here. perhaps too well, until the Abyss realizes its mistake. Then the region self destructs. The story seeds here outline several very different and interesting magic gone awry scenarios.
• Final Spell of Eli Ben-Menechen: this magic spell that inverts the traditional summoning of Goetia, pitting the mage against their virtue. When it shows up, mages in the area turn on each other, using the spell to corrupt and murder their rivals. Meanwhile the demons of virtue created via this spell do their own dark deeds. This mage war with abyssal 'virtues' could make for a great Chronicle background.
• Flesh Intruder: an enjoyable bit of body horror, this manifestation takes the form of an Abyss-infected organ. Once transplanted into a new host, it take control of its owner, dissolving their organs, and turning the host into a horrific meat puppet. Plus it has a nice tie in with the Sinister Organ Qigong below.
• The Halfway House: this haunted house traps its owners within it and then incorporates them into itself. It is perhaps to use as the background of a rescue mission.
• The Harper Family: this family made a desperate pact with an abyssal entity once. Now all of its members carry the entity's inhuman blood and benefit from uncanny luck and fortune. Now the richest and most powerful clan in the area, their patron grows in strength with each new member. What happens when it reaches critical mass?
• The Invisible Codex: this book promises its owner the knowledge they want most knowledge but drains them of vitality as they obsess over it.
• The Lethean: this intriguing entity devours the memories (painful or otherwise) of those who have suffered greatly. In exchange it replaces them with horrors born of the Abyss. Then it filters their perceptions through the Abyss. Then it devours them completely.
• The Nativity: These innocents are born with holes in their souls, yawning portals into the Abyss. Paradox increases around them as does bad luck. Hated by animals, blamed for misfortune with only their obsessive mothers to protect them, saving them may be beyond the power of normal Supernal magic.
• Nemesis Continuum: this set of alien laws of physics can only be uncovered by scientific geniuses. But they undermine reality, warping gravity, thermodynamics, and other basic principles. I rather like this concept as a possible entry point for the God-Machine.
• The Ractain: this subspecies of humanity may once have been like the Harpers above but less dangerous. Now they are a vector for a contagious disease also called the Ractain. It causes the infected to lose their sense of sight and smell and replaces it with the ability to see Shadow and see Auras. Eventually the victims enter Shadow and decompose into a locus.
• Red Worms: these parasites infest mortal blood and make them easy prey for vampires. They then multiply within the undead and spread back to mortals. Meanwhile the mage who brought them into this world is tormented by nightmares and the region where they spread is drained of Mana.
• The Shard: this magically addictive MMO generates quests that cause Abyssal manifestations. Where are the servers? Who is running them?
• Sinister Organ Qigong: this twisted form of yoga corrupts qi points, turning people into psychopaths and tainting their organs. It is more of a sinister conspiracy than a manifestation.
• The Swarmer: a pattern in architecture or other structures allows this manifestation to enter. It then manipulates social groups, turning animals into deadly swarms or people into eerily coordinated mobs. Those who threaten it or its minions suffer the horde's attack.
• The Temple of Zanak Khan: an astral realm of decadence and depravity, the Temple was born of the mind of a 1930s pulp author/mage. Those who discover it find their morality corroded as they discover reality is meaningless.
• The Twisting Maze: this manifestation distorts time and space turning a location into a labyrinth where the shortest path is not a straight line. Ultimately unstable, it swallows the location whole and erases it and its inhabitants from existence. It strikes me much like House of Leaves.
• Umbragos: this Abyssal spirit tempts other Shadow dwellers to turn to Abyss in exchange for tainted essence. Those spirits who take the bargain exude the worst qualities of their archetype.
• Unwelcome Guest: a form of psychic vampire, the unwelcome guest takes the form of someone or something the victim finds fascinating and wants to spend his or her time talking with. It then isolates them and drains their mental and physical strength.

In My Games

In my own games I've extracted a lot of usefulness from this book. Abyssal Spiders featured prominently in two of my campaigns and one convention game. The Crossways formed the basis for a one shot and later the penultimate story of my last Changeling game. The Nativity provided my Mages a serious moral dilemma while the Shard was subverted by a gamaholic who simply extracted the mind control aspect and kept playing. Each was highly engaging and provided unique challenges to my players.

Conclusion

In you are running a Mage: the Awakening game that involves the Abyss at all (if only through paradoxes) this book will be very helpful. The same can be said if you need new monsters and threats for a Mortal, Hunter, or other game that relies on confronting weird threats to reality.