Hungry ghosts and dream-eaters

Tetsubo was originally intended to be the “fantasy medieval Japan” supplement for Warhammer, but there were personnel changes at Games Workshop after Jamie Thomson and I were asked to write it. On the week we were due to deliver the manuscript, contacts in the GW offices advised us it would probably no longer fit their publishing plans. And so it turned out. We recovered the rights, and over the years talked about doing it with other publishers, but most of them wanted more of a 1960s Japanese cinema vibe than a Muromachi/Edo style setting.

In lockdown I took advantage of the sudden surfeit of spare time to start converting Tetsubo to Paul Mason’s Outlaws RPG system. I’ll get back to it in the next pandemic, if we haven’t had a nuclear war first. In the meantime, here are a couple of yokai from the book translated into Dragon Warriors rules – or should that be “Tatsu Bushi”? (If you want the original Warhammer stats, they're here.)

Baku

The baku is a powerful quadruped. It is called the Eater of Dreams, and people in rural areas sometimes make offerings so that it will devour their nightmares for them. Nonetheless the baku is not a kami but a physical creature, albeit one with myriad wondrous powers. Its ability is not restricted to consuming evil dreams. It can devour any dream, and characters whose dreams are taken frequently can become irritable or enervated.

If a baku takes up residence in an area it may come close to human habitations by night in order to feed. At all times it exudes a narcotic sorcery – characters who are unaware of its approach must resist with a Psychic Talent roll of difficulty factor 16 or else fall into a deep slumber; the roll is made using d20+2 if the character was already recumbent and ready for sleep.

Characters visited regularly over several nights suffer temporary penalties of −1 from PERCEPTION, Psychic Talent and Reflexes for as long as the baku's visits continue. If the visitations persist for more than a week, characters also start to lose 1 experience point per night. (This only applies to experience built up since the last level break; if it goes on long enough the character will not drop a rank, just lose all their unconverted experience.) If the visitations go on uninterrupted for a month, the victim develops insanity (randomly rolled). If the baku is slain or prevented from reaching its victims, depleted characteristics recover with just a few good nights' sleep but lost experience is gone and must be earned all over again. If an insane victim sees the baku’s dead body, he or she loses their insanity.

Baku are semi-intelligent and have been known to speak in guttural, half-coherent tones. It may be that they do not understand what they say but only regurgitate garbled phrases from the dreams they have eaten. Sometimes baku can be controlled by magic, so players could encounter one as the steed or servant of a powerful wizard.

Physique: The body of a baku resembles a tiger as large as a bull. Its fur is slick black and patterned with green circles like staring eyes. Its head has a long snout like that of a tapir or elephant, usually crested with long slender horns. It has a mane, but its domed forehead is bald (or even, in some accounts, fleshless). This is the appearance of a male baku. Females have a completely different physiognomy, but there are no reliable accounts from which any description could be attempted here.

Behaviour: Baku fear daylight and will always return to their lair before sunrise – usually a burrow or cave, sometimes a deserted temple in thick woodland. Although powerful they are not used to encountering opponents who fight back; any time a baku takes a wound it must make a morale roll or flee; deduct the rank of all opponents it is facing from 25, and the baku must roll the result or less on d20 to stand its ground. Sometimes baku will flee without waiting to be wounded, as they are intelligent enough to recognise there is nothing to be gained in fighting against the odds.

Special rules: A baku given an hour to feast on the dreams of a sleeping spellcaster will cause him or her to suffer the loss of d3 Magic Points the following day. Mystics suffer a penalty of 1 to Psychic Fatigue Checks.

When a baku strikes someone in combat it steals some of the strength of his dream-self. This has no perceptible effect on most people, but against a spellcaster it causes the loss of d6 Magic Points; mystics must roll a Psychic Fatigue Check with the damage they took substituting for spell level. Also, anyone injured must make an Intelligence roll (difficulty factor 14) or fall into a deep sleep until the baku leaves the vicinity.

If the baku is able to feast on dreams it fights with an ATTACK bonus of +3. If thwarted, its ATTACK is as listed.

In retreat, this creature can move ‘like the wind’ according to the description given by Kotei in his Bakemonojin. When the baku is fleeing from combat it moves at three times normal speed.

ATTACK 21                                    2 x Claws (d8,4) or 1 x Bite (d10,5)
DEFENCE 10                                 Armour Factor: 4
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 18             Movement: 14m (42m when fleeing)
EVASION: 8                                   STEALTH: 28
                                                        PERCEPTION: 20 (darksight)
Health Points: 2d6+24
Rank Equivalent: 10th

Abilities & Traits:

• Aura of Slumber: Anyone within 10m of a baku who has not already perceived it must make a Psychic Talent check (difficulty factor 16) or fall into a deep sleep lasting 1d6 x 10 minutes unless the sleeper is physically shaken awake.
• Dream Eater: Anyone injured by the baku’s attack must make an Intelligence roll (difficulty factor 14) to avoid falling asleep as above. If a spellcaster, they lose d6 Magic Points; mystics roll Psychic Fatigue.
• Nightmare Parasite: If a baku visits a person repeatedly, the affected individual experiences a penalty of −1 to PERCEPTION, Psychic Talent and Reflexes for as long as the visits continue. If visited for more than a week, they also lose 1 unbanked experience point per night.
• Wary Hunter: Baku are cautious and will retreat if seriously injured. If a baku takes a wound, it must roll [25 minus combined rank of opponents] or less on d20 or flee.
• Windborne Escape: A baku that flees from combat increases its movement to three times normal, vanishing into the night with uncanny speed.

Gaki

Gaki (‘hungry ghosts’) are tormented spirits cursed with an insatiable hunger due to their past sins, resulting in negative karma that means they cannot be reborn. They manifest in different forms depending on their cravings. Someone who stole from the bodies of the dead, for example, might become a corpse-eating gaki.

Bukyo teaches that appetite and desire are the cause of suffering, a doctrine vividly illustrated by the existence of hungry ghosts. For this reason it is sometimes possible for a Bukyo priest to placate a gaki by offering to perform the Segaki rite. This gives the ghost a chance to escape its suffering and be reborn as some lowly creature such as an insect. However, it is difficult for even a devout priest to reason with a gaki in this way because all gaki are effectively insane in human terms.

Physique: Like all ghosts, gaki are not restricted to one form. Sometimes they appear as roiling clouds of black smoke on which their human form is superimposed. This is thought to be a glimpse into Gakido, or the Hell of the Hungry Dead. Sometimes they are reported as having furry limbs or insectoid features, but this may be a subjective impression resulting from the observer's fear of the gaki. More usually, just as a gaki is about to attack, it will take a guise based on its craving. So a ketsu-gaki will manifest a face of wet blood, a chokenju-gaki might wear features molded of clay, and so on.

Behaviour: Gaki find it hard to resist any opportunity to assuage their hunger. To do so the gaki must roll 5 or 6 on d6. If the roll fails, the gaki must feed even if this means putting itself in danger.

Usually the gaki’s locus of haunting will be a graveyard, temple or mansion, and they will not move beyond that, but in some cases it can be a much more extensive area. One notorious gaki that was eventually enlightened by the priest Dogen had been condemned to haunt the entire length of the Shokowado highway, more than two hundred miles from end to end.

Special rules: Gaki cannot be harmed by nonmagical weapons. They can only manifest with any force at night, or occasionally during the daytime if there is a fog, blizzard or thunderstorm.

People surviving an encounter with a gaki commonly develop a phobia – often, strangely, a fear of insects. Any character who succumbs to a gaki’s fright attack acquires a phobia – 50% of entomophobia, 20% arachnophobia, otherwise roll randomly.

Other powers vary according to the type of gaki encountered. The list here is only a framework on which the referee should feel free to build. Many gaki have magical powers as a residue of merit from much earlier incarnations, and no two are entirely alike.

Chokenju-Gaki

The spirits of men who despoiled shrines for the sake of gain, or who took treasure from ancient tombs. They are cursed with a ravenous hunger for grave-clay, funereal offerings and the charred remnants of funeral pyres. A chokenju-gaki will usually be restricted to a graveyard and will not bother anyone who does not intrude on its feasting.

This variety of gaki is prone to taking normal human form by day. Often they will wear the guise of a solitary priest or hermit living in a cottage in the graveyard. They are typically less obsessive and more reasonable during the day, and they may even ask for help if confronted by one who has guessed the truth about them.

At night the chokenju-gaki may take a monstrous form of earth, cerements and mouldered bones, instilling dread in any living creature who sees it. Roll 4d6 for fright attack, and a victim who succumbs will flee in terror or fight at −2 from ATTACK if cornered.

If engaged in combat, the gaki slashes with jagged talons which carry a variant of the Wasting Disease (see The Elven Crystals). Anyone who takes damage must roll Strength or less on d20 to resist the disease, then if they fail roll again each day to recover. Each day of illness causes −1 to both Strength and Health Points. If the character loses a total of half their Strength or more during the whole course of the disease, then even after recovering their appearance will be permanently affected, making their flesh grey and pitted: the character suffers −2 Looks.

ATTACK 20                                Talons (d8,5) and disease
DEFENCE 16                              Armour Factor: d3
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 15         Movement: 10m (15m)
EVASION: 4                                  STEALTH: 10
                                                        PERCEPTION: 10 (darksight)
Health Points: 3d6+10
Rank Equivalent: 8th

Doku-Gaki

The ghosts of poisoners, doomed to thirst for poison themselves. Anyone who is carrying or brewing any form of poison risks attracting a doku-gaki's attention. The creature is likely to begin its attack by approaching the character while he or she is asleep, usually in the form of a vapour with weak (2d6) toxic or deliriant effect.

Taking a more cohesive form if combat becomes inevitable, it strikes with envenomed claws. Each time it hits and inflicts damage, make a roll for poison of normal strength. The first failed roll results in the victim becoming drowsy (−1 from all rolls), the second in partial paralysis (like a Weaken spell), and the third in death. If rescued in time, the victim will recover from the venom after a day’s rest.

ATTACK 18                                Claws (d8,4) and poison
DEFENCE 12                              Armour Factor: 3
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 15         Movement: 12m (20m)
EVASION: 5                                  STEALTH: 20
                                                        PERCEPTION: 14 (panoptical)
Health Points: 2d6+12
Rank Equivalent: 7th

Jikininki

A ghoulish creature, usually the ghost of someone who robbed or defiled the dead. Anyone confronting a jikininki unexpectedly is subject to a d20 fright attack that can result in them becoming awestruck – unable to move, speak or attack, though they can still defend themselves. The character can attempt to snap out of it by rolling Intelligence or less on d20 each round, and once they do so there is no need to check again in that encounter.

Jikininki do not kill to eat. They usually crave the flesh of someone who has died from other means, and will only fight if kept from reaching the corpse. A person eaten by a jikininki can never be restored to life.

In areas where a jikininki is known to haunt, some families have acquired the habit of murdering wayfarers whenever someone in their household dies. This ensures that the jikininki's hunger will be assuaged by eating the wayfarer instead of the family member on the first night, allowing the householders time to arrange a cremation the next day. Of course, people who do this kind of thing are only ensuring that they will return as gaki in their next life.

Encounter with a jikininki

All then left the house except the priest, who went to the room where the dead body was lying. The usual offerings had been set before the corpse and a small Buddhist lamp—tomyo—was burning. The priest recited the service and performed the funeral ceremonies, after which he entered into meditation. So meditating he remained through several silent hours, and there was no sound in the deserted village. But when the hush of the night was at its deepest there noiselessly entered a shape, vague and vast, and in the same moment the priest found himself without power to move or speak. He saw that shape lift the corpse, as with hands, and devour it more quickly than a cat devours a rat, beginning at the head and eating everything, the hair and the bones and even the shroud. And the monstrous thing, having thus consumed the body, turned to the offerings, and ate them also. Then it went away, as mysteriously as it had come.

– Koizumi Yakumo, Kwaidan

ATTACK 19                                   Claws (d8+1,6)
DEFENCE 13                                  Armour Factor: 4
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 16             Movement: 12m (25m)
EVASION: 4                                      STEALTH: 18
                                                            PERCEPTION: 15 (darksight)
Health Points: 2d10+9
Rank Equivalent: 8th

Ketsu-Gaki

A Yamatese vampire, this is the ghost of a murderer or an excessively cruel and violent person. The presence of a ketsu-gaki induces dread in living creatures: d20 fright attack to induce −2 ATTACK, −1 damage for the duration of the battle. In combat, the ketsu-gaki can either strike normally or else grapple. It will usually do this only when fighting a solitary opponent. A character who is grappled must make an immediate d20 roll trying to score equal to or under the average of their Strength and Reflexes score; if this fails they are paralysed and unable to act for 2d6 rounds. The gaki will make use of this time to drink the paralysed character's blood, extruding a proboscis or long needle-like teeth with which to do this. Each round it spends drinking will drain the victim of 1 ealth Point. When HP reach zero, the victim is discarded and must roll Strength or less on d20 or die at once. If the roll succeeds, the victim is incapacitated and may suffer from recurrent bleeding; assuming they survive, they recover as from normal injury but only get back half their rank in HP each day.

Ketsu-gaki can sometimes appear during the day wearing the appearance they bore in their previous incarnation. While in this manifestation they are able to control their hunger and are effectively just ghosts passing for living people.

ATTACK 22                                 Claws (d10,4) or grapple
DEFENCE 12                              Armour Factor: 3
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 16         Movement: 12m (25m)
EVASION: 4                                  STEALTH: 13
                                                        PERCEPTION: 13 (darksight)
Health Points: 3d6+10
Rank Equivalent: 9th

Kwa-Gaki

Arsonists, particularly those who have set fire to Bukyo temples, are reincarnated as kwa-gaki, or ‘fire-eating ghosts’. All forms of heat and light are consumed by this goblin, including spells such as Dragonbreath and Dazzle as well as the light of lanterns and candles. Such attacks are neutralized within a range of fifteen metres of the kwa-gaki and light sources automatically dim in the same region, with bright firelight guttering to the level of a candle and ordinarily dim illumination dropping to pitch darkness.

The creature’s touch draws heat from the target's body, causing the loss of an additional 1d3 damage from any successful attack.

A kwa-gaki which comes across a sleeping character may try to possess him or her in order to steal bodily warmth over a long period. This process takes 2d6 minutes, but works automatically if the gaki is not interrupted during this time. The character will begin to develop a chill as the gaki first feeds on their body warmth, interspersed with periods of burning fever when the gaki is satiated. This causes the character to be temporarily at −2 to all rolls most of the time, and totally incapacitated while the fever is on them. Normal medical treatment is ineffective, and the character must guess that they have become host to a gaki and seek the aid of a Bukyo priest. If and when the gaki is exorcized, the victim recovers almost immediately.

ATTACK 12+d10                            Claws (d8,4) but will usually attempt possession
DEFENCE 12                                  Armour Factor: 2
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 16             Movement: 10m (20m)
EVASION: 4                                      STEALTH: 22
                                                            PERCEPTION: 14 (darksight)
Health Points: 5d6
Rank Equivalent: 7th

Yokushiki-Gaki

Demonic spirits of carnality, corresponding to the incubi and succubi of Occidental myth. These beings were driven by overwhelming lust when alive, or else acquired bad karma through unnatural sexual practices. By night yokushiki-gaki are able to appear as preternaturally attractive individuals, but this is only an illusion and if encountered at all by day it is in the form of one made hideous by age and depravity.

In its night-time form the yokushiki-gaki can seduce characters of either sex. If the intended victim chooses to resist (they might not even try) roll 4d6 for the force of the attraction, subtract the victim’s rank, and the gaki must roll that or less of d20 to seduce them. If a yokushiku-gaki succeeds in coupling with a character, it drains them of their vitality, and they will awaken the next morning with their Health Points permanently reduced by 1.

A yokushiki-gaki will usually retreat if threatened with combat, though if interrupted in the throes of lovemaking (perhaps by the comrades of its victim, belatedly coming to her assistance) it will lash out violently. If its claws inflict damage on a character it will infect him or her with a disease (roll Strength or less on 3d6 to resist) that causes no HP loss but applies a −5 penalty to Looks for the 1-6 months that the disease lasts. At the same time the gaki will discard its comely appearance, the repugnant sight of its true face instilling dread (2d6 fright check; those succumbing are unable to act for 1-6 rounds) in everyone present. If someone who has had sex with a yokushiki-gaki sees its real face, he or she immediately acquires a form of insanity (randomly rolled).

ATTACK 18                                    Claws (d8,4)
DEFENCE 12                                  Armour Factor: 2
MAGICAL DEFENCE: 18             Movement: 15m (25m)
EVASION: 4                                      STEALTH: 18
                                                            PERCEPTION: 13 (panoptical)
Health Points: 2d6+8
Rank Equivalent: 7th

Adventure seeds

The gaki make for fascinating antagonists because they aren't simply monsters to defeat; they have tragic backstories and represent moral lessons about greed, lust, and violence. This provides referees with opportunities to create encounters with ethical dimensions beyond simple combat.

1. The Hungry Road: A notorious ketsu-gaki haunts a stretch of highway. Fearful locals have developed the terrible practice of sacrificing travellers whenever a villager dies, to distract the gaki from feasting on the remains of their loved ones.
2. The Beautiful Stranger: A yokushiki-gaki has taken up residence in an abandoned house. Several young people from a nearby village have fallen mysteriously ill after reporting encounters with a beautiful stranger.
3. A Pious Caretaker: A chokenju-gaki haunts an ancient temple, appearing as an elderly keeper by day, in which form it is unaware of its true nature, but transforming into a monstrous guardian by night to ward off looters and defilers.

If you decide to use any of these hungry ghosts in your campaign, they could lead to interesting scenarios where players might need to:

• Investigate the gaki's origin to properly exorcise it
• Navigate difficult moral choices when encountering villages with disturbing practices
• Help a gaki that appears human by day but struggles with its nature
• Perform the Segaki ritual to give a repentant spirit a chance at rebirth

Hear ye

A quick note to let you know that the Fabled Lands CRPG expands today to include The Castle of Lost Souls, as revised and expanded by Paul Gresty. Read more about it here.

And the Dealing With Demons chapbook is free on Kindle till tomorrow. Get your copy here.

Tomorrow: Dragon Warriors goes east, with converted Tetsubo rules for hungry ghosts and dream eaters. See you then.

Tetsubo monogatari

If you've been following the Tetsubo saga, you'll remember that I made an effort to update it for release during lockdown after the licence to Grim & Perilous Studios had lapsed. But other projects got in the way, not least of those being the Vulcanverse books, so I had to shelve Tetsubo for a while. And just as well, because several people pointed out that the new version of the game that I was writing was not the version that anybody was waiting for.

Luckily the solution was at hand. Jason Duff of Earl of Fife Games got in touch with a proposal to take on the Tetsubo licence and integrate it with his Heroes & Hardships rule system. Jason says:

"I am excited to see Tetsubō finally come to life in 2023. And equally excited that it is for Heroes & Hardships, which I have dedicated years to develop. My long term goal was to always support Heroes & Hardships with various settings, and Tetsubō is a perfect first major release for our system. I am eager for the challenge of making Tetsubō an authentic Sengoku Jidai setting with inspirations from Japanese mythology that will set it apart from any similar roleplaying game on the market today. For those interested in the core rulebook, please check out our Kickstarter page."

Jamie and I are delighted that Tetsubo finally seems to be on course to appear in a version that will satisfy everyone who has been waiting for it as well as (we hope) a whole new slew of players. Keep an eye on Earl of Fife Games' website for further updates.

Don't call them rappas

There’s new news about Tetsubo coming soon. That’s the Japanese-styled RPG that began as a Warhammer supplement and then began turning into a much more authentic game of its own during lockdown. I have been adapting it to work with Paul Mason’s Outlaws RPG. Also, he has lived in Japan for over thirty years so is ideally qualified to advise me on both the rules and the culture.

I began by asking Paul about kusa, a group of medieval Japanese saboteurs-cum-mischief-makers that I read about in a martial arts magazine. The kusa were a sort of precursor to ninja, but I also wanted Tetsubo to dispense with the notion of ninja as feudal-era special ops that was popularized after World War 2. And the best way to go back to the roots of the profession (if indeed it has any that we can isolate from all the modern myths) would be to ditch the name “ninja” in favour of something more historically accurate.

Paul responded: Wikipedia has kusa as another term for ninja, but unfortunately no context behind it, whether it's period-based or regional. My source for terms was the Iga-ryu Ninja Museum. It lists shinobi, ukami, kanja/rappa, onmitsu and ninja as the terms used by period (the last is listed for Taisho: ie the 20th century). Regional terms include some of those period based terms as well as suppa, ukami, dakko, kikimonoyaku, and kurohabaki. Interesting that it includes none of the Wiki ones apart from rappa and shinobi.

So in Tetsubo, kusa became the apprentice level of the kanja (not ninja) profession. I then asked Paul about how to represent defilement.

Paul: The term you need is kegare (穢). It would translate as impurity or uncleanness. When you go to a shrine and wash your hands at the little shack for that purpose, it's a ritual washing to rid you of kegare. This obsession with cleanliness (see also Japanese bath houses, and taking off your shoes when you enter a house) is somewhat relevant in the present pandemic. I've even heard it given as a reason why the Japanese never had an industrial revolution -- better hygiene meant longer lifespan than Brits meant there were not enough surplus agricultural workers, a necessity for industry.

Dave: Funnily enough, I’d previously thought of using kegare for bad joss [a rules concept in Outlaws] and immediately rejected it for the fairly daft reason that Tetsubo already has defilement defined as occurring in specific circumstances (proximity to a dead body, fluffing etiquette when addressing a kami, etc).

Paul: That's exactly what bad joss is supposed to deal with!

Dave: The mental process here is interesting because it illustrates why it’s taking me longer to edit Tetsubo now than it probably took to write it in the first place. I’ll think of a way to implement something (kuji-no-in, say) using Outlaws rules. But then I see there are a couple of other ways to do it, and whichever I choose has knock-on effects, so I enter a mental holding pattern where no decision is taken as I move on to another part of the rules. All of which is pretty stupid given that the people who want Tetsubo will mostly be Warhammer players and the people who want Outlaws really want Outlaws, not Tetsubo – so I’m agonizing over choices that might only matter to the handful of people who buy the book and play it as written.

Paul: I can't help thinking that trying to imagine the kind of people who want to play the game is a bad move. Surely you can only say to yourself: what is this game to me? And design it accordingly. In the case of Tetsubo, the answer is clearly: "not Kwaidan". So just go ahead and do interesting things that wouldn't work in Kwaidan.

Kwaidan was/is to be a roleplaying game set in Heian Japan, considerably more culturally authentic and closer to my heart than Tetsubo, which everybody seems to associate with Kurosawa's early "noodle Easterns".  

Dave: At least I’ve managed to break that holding pattern regarding kegare. You are of course quite right – that’s exactly what I needed to substitute for bad joss. And instead of getting hung up on how to square the abstract acquisition of kegare when acquiring motivation with specific in-game circumstances that cause or remove defilement, all I need to do is put numbers to the latter. +5 kegare for touching a dead body, -[degree of success] for a purification CEREMONY roll, etc.

I’m still undecided about how to handle magic. In a perfect world I wouldn’t bother having it as a separate discipline and simply have it bleed into everything else – but that’s Kwaidan, not Tetsubo. I was listening to the Appendix N Book Club podcast in which somebody said we’d had forty-five years of role-playing, and still nobody has figured out a way to make magic magical.

Paul: That's wrong. Plenty of people have figured out how to make magic magical. It's just that however you do it, once you write down rules someone will find a way to suck the magic out of it. My philosophy is that role-playing magic rules are there for people who don't want magic to be magical. For the rest of us, if you are going to allow players to use magic, it's all about trust.

Dave: I really like the Outlaws magic system and it does feel that sorcerers in Outlaws are very different from the usual RPG artilleryman types. But Outlaws magic has a very strong Chinese flavour (not that I know what a Japanese flavour of magic ought to be like) and it’s a mark of its strength that it doesn’t easily lend itself to conversion to a different setting. You could use the core Outlaws abilities system for anything from Tekumel to Ancient Greece – and Arabian Nights and Camelot, as we’ve said before – because people still have to haggle, fight, sneak, impress, treat wounds, sing, make works of art, etc. But the obstacle to any generic system is magic. That’s where GURPS falters: what would “generic magic” even look like?

Paul: Yet another reason why I don't believe in GURPS. But ironically, if you're doing a Japanese magic system, the closest you're going to find is in a Chinese one. Throw away all that stuff about “shugenja” from Bushido. The image of a sorcerer in Japan is the onmyoshi. And the onmyoshi is a hell of lot closer to an Outlaws sorcerer than he is to a sorcerer in any other game. 

Dave: Given that any magic rules must fit the setting, do I retain the leadenly dull spells inherited from Warhammer, rejigged to give them Outlaws stats? That feels like a lazy option, and when I went through a list of the Tetsubo spells crossing off all the boring ones I was left with barely a dozen – and thus glaring gaps in what sorcerers could do. Pretty much the only thing I like from the original Tetsubo rules is that ninja (now kanja) were a type of sorcerer, but then when I read their spells, hobbled as they are by inheriting the magic system of Warhammer, that concept soon dissolves into the mucky residue medieval alchemists were left with in their vain attempts to turn lead into gold. 

What I should do is spend a couple of weeks with Joly’s Legend in Japanese Art really soaking up the depiction of sorcerers in myth, then rebuild from there. It would be enjoyable, too, but at that point I’d really have to wonder why I was investing that effort into Tetsubo when it’d be better spent on Kwaidan. Just this morning I was flipping through the book and M. Joly chastised me with the information that shugendo is not “wizardry”, but a syncretic mystical sect -- in the real-world sense of mystical, that is. And Royall Tyler’s book Japanese Tales mentions that one folkloric power of wizards is “causing the penis to disappear” – again, that’s more one for Kwaidan, I think.

Paul: Spell-lists are one of those soul-sucking things that I don't miss in role-playing games. I switched to C&S because I liked the way it encouraged the idea that sorcerers were almost 'above' spells. One of my players got so into the mindset that his character spent all his time enchanting materials, and he infuriated (and intimidated, as his character became quite powerful) the other players by showing little interest in their schemes, but simply trying to manipulate them to obtain the rare materials he wanted. I think unless magic has that distance, that otherness, it is simply technology: blasters in Traveller.

Dave: That’s what I thought about most of the magical battles in the Harry Potter films. The wands were just phasers. In Chinese Ghost Story or Game of Thrones, on the rare occasions when you get to see magic it does feel magical.

And as for maboroshi – I don’t even know where that came from. Presumably a class of illusionist in Warhammer, and Jamie and I reached for “phantasm” as a plausible equivalent in Japanese? (Or did it come from Lafcadio Hearn? If so hardly authentic, but Hearn I’d accept as valid in the way that Pre-Raphaelite reimaginings of Arthurian myth are valid.) Do I rebuild the class using Outlaws magic, or abandon it and move the original Tetsubo spells for maboroshi (if any are worth keeping) across to whatever I end up calling sorcerers. (My pocket dictionary suggests maho-tsukai or kijutsu-shi, but I suspect they may be thinking of a stage conjurer.)

Paul: Maboroshi means illusion, not illusionist. Annoyingly, Illusionist would be Maboroshishi, which is too silly to use. And Maboroshiya, the alternative, sounds like a shop (remember Mr Benn?). Maho-tsukai is a literal translation of “magic-user”, which was a term I hated in D&D from the very earliest days. I mean, you could use it, and the Japanese term is probably marginally better, in that it is slightly possible that someone might say it, whereas one reason I shacked up with C&S so early was that I could never imagine any story in which someone said, “He is a mighty magic-user!”

Kijutsushi sounds more interesting. The scroll you asked me to research, after all, was from a series called kijutsu no kagami, ie “the mirror of kijutsu”. Strictly speaking, it means “magic tricks”, but it might have more to it, and the scroll suggests that it does.

So this is how the sorcerous professions of Tetsubo ended up:

The generic term for the spellcasters of Yamato is mahutsukai. There are four broad classes:

• Onmyoshi specialize in astrology, divination, protection against spirits, and the study and manipulation of the five elements, with particular emphasis on geomancy and the correct directions and locations to avoid bad luck. By preference they channel magical energy from iyashirochi (ley lines or ‘dragon veins’, natural sources of ki in the landscape) or from the spirit world. 
• Genka are a more select and secretive school of mages who practice spells connected with death, illusion and destructive energy. They have a reputation for drawing magical energy from servants, acolytes or even from unwilling captives. 
• Taoist mages are mystic hermits who develop control over reality and natural forces by means of asceticism and meditation. They prefer to draw their magical force from within themselves, often while meditating under waterfalls, and store it in a focus (often a mirror or gourd) until needed. 
• Kanja are the eerie ‘wizards of the night’ whose study of magic revolves around their activities as assassins, saboteurs and spies. They power their spells with whatever source of occult energy is most conveniently to hand.

But that’s not the whole story. A sorcerer might change his or her school, acquiring spells and practices from several classes. Bukyo priests have access to magic not studied by any of the mahutsukai and that uses spiritual power. Shinto priests obtain boons from kami that serve the same function as spells. And anyone might acquire knowledge of spells from a supernatural being like a tengu or from a book, whether or not they have any formal training in magic.

In any case, ordinary people are unversed in the types of magic and use the various terms for mahutsukai classes as if they were interchangeable. In a state of ignorance, personal prejudice will often serve to supply a definition. Thus a spellcaster who has associated with the speaker's own lord may be described as an onmyoshi, one suspected of working for an enemy lord may be called a genka or kanja, and one known to have come from Huaxia or who refuses employment may be labelled a Taoist. Sorcerers themselves do little to clear up this state of confusion, as each sorcerer knows that his or her power will be greater against a foe who is not quite sure what to expect.

A divine wind

If you haven't followed the Tetsubo saga, it starts here and until recently ended here. The tishatsu version: Jamie and I wrote a Japanese-flavoured supplement for the Warhammer. That's way back in the early '90s. It was never used, the rights reverted to us, and parts of it appeared in Robert Rees's fanzine Carnel.

The rest is told in the links to those two earlier posts, and during lockdown I made a start on adapting it to fit with Paul Mason's Outlaws RPG. If not for the Vulcanverse books it would be finished and on sale by now. Oh, and Jewelspider. And some bits of paid work too. Stuff got in the way, in short, but I'm hoping to get it done sometime in 2023. So, only about thirty years late.

A couple more links. This week I'm interviewed on the Awesome Lies blog about Tetsubo's past and future. My thanks to Gideon of Awesome Lies for the opportunity, and if there are any questions he missed -- well, you know where the comments are. I also enjoyed this article on putting Warhammery concepts of Chaos into a Japanese setting (despite the author's conclusion that "Tetsubo shows that slavishly copying Japanese culture and folklore into Warhammer doesn't really make for a satisfying result") though if and when Tetsubo does get an official release it won't any longer be trying to fit into the Warhammer universe.

A close look at the Vulcanverse books

People have been asking about the Vulcanverse gamebooks (in a few cases even with a slight whiff of dudgeon) so I thought now would be a good time to answer a few FAQs.

Why are you writing these instead of getting on with more Fabled Lands?

The short answer is that the funds are simply not there to pay for everything required to do a Fabled Lands book. Even if we found a few spare months and wrote one, there’s also all the checking (oh, those flowcharts!), editing, and typesetting. And then we have to drum up cash to pay for artwork, a map and a cover.

The difference with Vulcanverse is that it’s funded by a multimillion-dollar company with blockchain transactions constantly pumping cash up its arm. The gamebooks are barely even small change to them, the equivalent of handing out bags with your brand logo on. They can afford to knock out five books – or rather, to finance Fabled Lands Publishing to do the books.

I get why people are disappointed. Obviously I’d rather work on my own thing than on somebody else’s IP, and you usually get a better book when the writer is free to let their imagination fly. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Paul Gresty is already working on Fabled Lands book 8. If I don’t find any paid work after finishing my stint on the Vulcanverse books, my first priority is the Jewelspider RPG, but right after that I figure I may as well start writing a new gamebook. That could be the long-planned Shadow King or it could be something else.

I’d need to run a Kickstarter to finance the art and production, and believe me the very thought makes my heart sink. Marketing and all that businessy stuff appeals to me about as much as drain-cleaning. But there’s no other way to raise the funds, so I’m just going to have to bite the bullet. Or do I mean plunger?

There's another lifeline for future Fabled Lands books, which is the CRPG from Prime Games. If that rekindles interest in the books and wins over new fans, completing the series could become a commercially viable proposition. We're hoping...  

Still, aren’t you doing a George R. R. Martin on us?

GRRM is certainly rich enough to just plough on and write all the Song of Ice & Fire books. I assume he takes time out to work on other things because he wants to stay creatively fresh. If he just tore through to the end it wouldn’t be very good. (You’ve seen the TV show? Like that.)

I hate abandoning a project. Backers on Patreon of my Jewelspider RPG have been patiently waiting a whole year for that. Jewelspider is emphatically not abandoned, but it has had to take a back seat to paying gigs. Still, the Patreon is financing artwork and at least when Jewelspider appears it will look all the better for the delay.

More heart-wrenchingly, I was unable to go on with my Mirabilis comic. Art is the killer cost there, and the publishers who were willing to take it on wanted indentured servitude and ownership of the IP forever. Other projects that are patiently waiting for my time: Abraxas and Tetsubo. They sit there half-completed but don't even enjoy the small but dedicated fanbase of Fabled Lands. Like my Brexit gamebook they are things that I'd be devoting my energy to if I could pick and choose my projects, but like Leonardo I have to work on what patrons demand, not on what pleases me.

If you are miffed about Vulcanverse gamebooks coming out when Fabled Lands is still unfinished, let me offer two arguments in consolation. First, FL is not unfinished in the way A Song of Ice & Fire is. There is no single storyline in FL, so it’s not like you can’t complete it. There are a very few quests from future books that tie back into books 1-7, and those aside the effect of having more books is simply to extend the borders of the explorable world. It’s like expansions on a videogame.

Also, unlike poor Mirabilis, FL is dormant rather than extinct. The last open-world gamebook I wrote was back in the ‘90s. Since then the only gamebooks I’ve done are Frankenstein and Can You Brexit? So you could see the work on Vulcanverse as me getting back into training. And by the way I needed it – my first Vulcanverse book overran by 900 sections and those sections are far wordier than FL. I’m learning again the brevity needed to pack a lot of quests into a 750-section open-world gamebook. So when I come off The Pillars of the Sky in theory I'd be fighting fit to tackle The Isle of a Thousand Spires. GRRM uses the same defence; the only difference between us is talent, wealth and looks.

 

How similar are the Vulcanverse books to Fabled Lands?

The rules are like a stripped-down FL system. You have four attributes: Charm, Grace, Ingenuity and Strength. Your scores in those typically range from -1 to +3, and you may have an item that gives a +1 or +2 bonus. Faced with a task like rolling a heavy stone (Strength) or sweet-talking a sentry (Charm) you roll two dice, add modifiers for your attribute score and any attribute-boosting item, and you need to equal or beat the difficulty.

Yep, you spotted it. Success is equalling or beating the difficulty. A slight difference from FL there. Also, a double 1 is always a fail and a double 6 is always a success.

What about Stamina? It doesn’t exist. In Vulcanverse you are either wounded or unwounded. When wounded you deduct 1 from attribute rolls. Told you it was FL-lite.

Another difference is how blessings work. You can have up to three blessings at once, and they are good for a single reroll on any failed attribute check.

How easy is it to die in the books?

Very hard. Hey, we know it’s not the ‘90s anymore. If you do get killed, resurrection is automatic except on a very few heroic quests, and you always get fair warning if you’re on a mission that you might not come back from.

 

What about the Vulcanverse world?

It’s not like Fabled Lands. Well, it’s probably quite a bit like FL book 10, in that the Vulcanverse is based on Greek and Roman mythology; you can read about that in earlier posts. It’s definitely FL-adjacent because the myths have been filtered through the brain of Jamie Thomson. (On the other hand, did Paul McCartney’s work with Wings feel like it was 50% Beatles, or was it something altogether different? The debate could go on for years.)

Jamie and I have worked separately on these books, as we did on Fabled Lands too; I wrote FL books 2, 3 and 6, he did the others. In the case of FL the end result was relatively seamless, but my and Jamie's Vulcanverse books are entirely different in tone, content, gameplay, writing style, structure and flavour. That's partly because we didn’t develop the groundwork together, but mainly because we’ve worked on our own distinct projects over the years. If you’re familiar with the Dirk Lloyd and Wrong Side of the Galaxy books, you’ll find Jamie’s trademark comedy genius running through The Houses of the Dead and The Wild Woods. Those also feature the D&D-ish high fantasy action-adventure momentum that made the Way of the Tiger books so memorable. (By the way, did I mention there's a Dirk Lloyd TV show on the way? It'll be the smash hit of 2022 and you heard it here first.)

It’s harder for me to identify my own style; Robbie Burns talked about that. I tend to go in for low fantasy, character relationships, dreamlike weirdness, surreal encounters, dry humour, horror and tragedy. Possibly you’ll notice those on display in The Hammer of the Sun and The Pillars of the Sky, my own contributions to the VV series, though less so in the latter because I’ve been asked to include more tie-ins from the Vulcanverse collectible card game. Still, you’ll be able to get a sense from these books, and particularly from The Hammer of the Sun, how any new FL gamebooks by me might play out.

Is there actually any purpose to your adventures?

Some people have grumbled that Fabled Lands doesn’t give you an objective to aim at. There, the whole point was that you’re living a life in a fantasy world and defining your own goals. What was I saying about it not being the ‘90s now? These days, the trend is to have a defined task like in a computer game.

With Vulcanverse, we’ve tried for a Witcher-like happy medium. There are lots of quests set in an open world like in Fabled Lands, and you can usually pick a side in any conflict. For example, in The Hammer of the Sun it’s possible to join the nomadic Amazons, and you can become their champion, and even take the throne the way Conan would (if he identified as female). But you can also get banished from the tribe, and if you reach a position of authority there are decisions you’ll make that will have a lasting effect on the world and the people in it.

Alongside all of those side-quests there’s a main storyline that connects across all the books and culminates in Vulcan City in book 5: Workshop of the Gods.

When are they out?

Hopefully very soon. The first two should be on sale a month from now (early September) and the next two before Christmas. And for once I'm leaving comments on, so if you have any other things you want to know about the Vulcanverse books, now's your chance.

The art of the possible

It was a pleasure and a privilege to be invited by Ralph Lovegrove onto his Fictoplasm podcast recently. Normally the structure of an episode involves Ralph reviewing a novel and then considering how it might inspire roleplaying games. Particularly recommended: Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mythago Wood, The Tremor of Forgery, The Chronicles of Prydain, Kill the Dead, The Eclipse of the Century, Lyonesse, and Elric of Melnibone. Talking of that last one, Ralph is currently embarking on a marathon read-though of Moorcock classics, so stay tuned.

A previous guest on the Fictoplasm podcast was my wife Roz Morris so to balance things out I guess Ralph just had to ask me. Tune in here for our long discussion which takes in Brexit (鎖国), Tetsubo (鉄棒), my planned Sparta RPG (Λ), Mirabilis (☄), Frankenstein (🧠), Tirikelu (₸), and of course Jewelspider (💎🕷 or 宝石クモ, take your pick). We also talk about politics, gamebook design, the Congo, Nazis, Sagas of the Icelanders, and roleplaying in soon-to-be-sunken lands from Abraxas to Lyonesse but I've got no kanji or other symbols for those.

Jamie mentioned after listening to the podcast that I came across a bit like Tony Blair at times. Apparently he meant because of my vocal inflection rather than my politics. I suggested we might do a regular Fabled Lands podcast. (Jamie would be the Gordon Brown of the partnership, presumably.) So far I haven't been able to convince him, but maybe if there's enough demand...

The shinpu hits the fan

Back in the 20th century, the grimdark fantasy tradition had its beginnings in Michael Moorcock's Von Bek novels (The Warhound and the World's Pain, etc) which surely inspired Games Workshop's Warhammer RPG. In the early '90s, Jamie and I signed with GW to write a pseudo-Japanese supplement for Warhammer, which made sense given that the Sengoku period makes the Thirty Years' War look like a tussle between two drunks outside a kebab shop. But enough of me and Jamie...

Tetsubo had been commissioned by Paul Cockburn. Unfortunately he left GW the same week we delivered the manuscript. The new people in charge of roleplaying games there didn't have much enthusiasm for an Oriental take on the game -- and possibly not for roleplaying in general, as soon after that I think GW passed the Warhammer licence on elsewhere.

So that left Tetsubo in limbo -- or rather in Yomi -- until 2018, when Daniel Fox of Grim & Perilous Studios asked to adapt it as a supplement to his Warhammer heartbreaker, Zweihänder. The good news was the renewed spark of interest drove me to dig out the Tetsubo manuscript and scan it all, most of the book never having even been saved to disk and only existing in a faded dot-matrix-printed box of papers. The bad news: after a burst of activity it sank back into the land of mists, and after a year the contract lapsed.

Daniel Fox got back in touch last month to talk about renewing the contract, but his thinking had moved on. He wanted to bring in elements of 1960s chambara movies. That wasn't in itself a problem. Jamie and I are Kurosawa fans, even though we harbour no illusions about his movies being in any way authentically Japanese. But Daniel wanted to square the circle by meshing that with a real Sengoku vibe, and he had the problem that the book as written was more of a fit with the Bakumatsu -- because, of course, GW had wanted players to be able to bring their Old World characters in.

And then there was the question of who would tackle the redesign and conversion to the new system. Daniel proposed hiring Graeme Davis, who would have been ideal, but he was too busy to take it on. Now, at this point I should probably address the notion of "cultural appropriation", whose proponents (I think; I don't actually know any) might say the game could only be done properly if it had a Japanese designer. But would "a Japanese designer" have to mean somebody born and raised in Japan? Or could it be a Japanese citizen (wherever he or she was born) with a deep knowledge of medieval Japanese culture? Or simply somebody who happens to be ethnically Japanese -- Kazuo Ishiguro, for instance, who went to school down the road from me in Surrey? You might have guessed by now that I don't subscribe to the woke obsession with ethnicity, an obsession which is supposedly progressive but in fact quite the opposite; we are all human, nobody owns culture or history, and there's no reason why the world's leading authority on, say, Classical Greece shouldn't be Maori.

But those are all just distractions. The bottom line is, a year on, Jamie and I could see that Tetsubo just wasn't going to happen. At least, it will only happen if we do it ourselves.

Currently we're mulling over whether this is worth doing as a Kickstarter. We'd need to rebuild it around a different game system, of course, and our first thought was Powered By The Apocalypse, which we enjoyed for its simplicity when we played our Sagas of the Icelanders campaign, but the appeal of Tetsubo will surely be to traditional roleplayers whereas PbtA would take it in a whole other narrativist direction. So not that.

One option is to use a variant of my Tirikelu RPG, but I'm not sure that would make best use of the skills and career paths in the Tetsubo book. I intend using Tirikelu for my Abraxas RPG (a good fit, hopefully, being science fantasy) and also Tirikelu isn't GURPS; we can't just tack it onto everything. Jamie suggested using a variant of my currently-in-development Jewelspider rules, on the principle that OSR players and Warhammer fans might have at least a nodding acquaintance with Dragon Warriors.

But then we had a brainwave. Paul Mason is an Anglo-Japanese academic who has lived in Japan for over twenty-five years. He's not only an authority on Japanese culture and history, he's also an editor, author and RPG designer with his own (as yet unpublished) game Outlaws, based on the stories of Liang Shan Po. What if we used the Outlaws system for Tetsubo? Not only would the gaming world get a taste of a brilliant and authentic Eastern-influenced RPG, but we'd get an extremely erudite Japanese scholar on board to consult on the final manuscript.

We asked Paul, he said yes, and that's the plan right now -- unless somebody throws an even better suggestion into the comments below.

 

Further reading, viewing and playing:

• Kurosawa: The Samurai Collection
• Seven Samurai
• Onibaba
• Ugetsu Monogatari
• Kwaidan
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
• The Von Bek series by Michael Moorcock
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• Zweihander RPG

That was the year that was

"Night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue."

Like H G Wells's time traveller, we've careened through another year. There should be a lever to slow this thing down, shouldn't there? But as "minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring" I've had the chance to glimpse a few standout moments of 2016.

My best roleplaying experience was getting to sit in on a session of Dom Camus' Earth Force campaign. This is a modern take on superheroes, with a dash of existential threat and a background swirl of geopolitics. I played a scientist and got through without actively needing to use my powers, but nonetheless getting multinational backing for my open source research program, which made me feel quite Tony Stark. The whole thing was helped along by an elegant, streamlined system that did everything you need of rules and kept out of the way of the roleplaying. I hope Dom will publish it.

Talking of sweetly simple rules, my favourite new game system has been Gregor Vuga's Sagas of the Icelanders. If you're familiar with the sagas, this captures them perfectly. I ran it straight -- no fantasy, no 21st century mores, just bleak neighborhood struggles against the unsentimental elements and your fellow man. It's quick, easy, atmospheric, and the perfect antidote to decades of GURPS.

Proudest achievement of the year was publishing Can You Brexit Without Breaking Britain? This is my and Jamie's first gamebook in more than twenty years. I have no idea what will happen to the UK in 2019 (good luck -- by then I should have regenerated as an Irishman) but I am sure that the book will give you a better understand of the Brexit process than any of the government ministers charged with negotiating it. And Britain's godfather of gamebooks, Ian Livingstone himself, has taken a look at Can You Brexit? and pronounced it "very clever". He may be partial, of course.

Around the time I was finalizing Can You Brexit?, Ashton MacSaylor was getting ready to deliver on his Kickstarter for The Good, the Bad and the Undead. If you've hung around the saloon for a while, you'll remember that was the Wild West gamebook that Jamie was going to write but couldn't get beyond the outline. Ashton took it over, roped and threw and branded it, and now it's riding in out of the desert with a mean eye and a belt full of bullets.

Talking of gamebooks, I wrote two audio adventures for the Amazon Echo, one an all-new interactive drama, the other a reskin of my first ever gamebook Crypt of the Vampire. With very tight deadlines those were hard work, but luckily I like hard work, as long as it's work on something that interests me.


The highlight of the summer was travelling to Germany for Manticon. Good beer, nice people, an open society, fabulous landscapes, and the best trains I've ever been on. I might move there. (See Brexit, above.)

Earlier in the year, I got a call from Lawrence Whitaker at The Design Mechanism, publishers of the Mythras RPG. (Yes, I know; apologies for the spelling. I have to grit my teeth every time I type it, but it's the Runequest system with Glorantha stripped out, so it actually is rather brilliant.) TDM have acquired the licence to do a roleplaying game based on Jack Vance's fantasy trilogy Lyonesse, and having heard me talk about it on the Fictoplasm podcast they thought I might like to contribute a section to the book. You bet. I owe Jack Vance a huge creative debt and it's an honour to pay a little of that back.

Then there was Daniel Fox of Grim & Perilous Studios getting in touch to bring Tetsubo back from the Land of Roots. Nothing's forgotten, as we Robin of Sherwood fans know. Watch for that in 2019, if you still have money left after food and medicine rationing.

I also got roped in by Ian Turnbull, one of the Black Cactus co-founders, to do some work on a Virtual Reality game. Don't reach for your Oculus headset just yet. The developers originally hoped to get the game ready by October this year, but Ian's and my combined half-century in game development told us that was never going to happen. Maybe next October. My role was, as it often is these days, to clarify, simplify and focus the design and creative goals of the game. (And to chuck out all the bloody cutscenes on the principle of "discover, don't tell".)

In October my time machine lurched off into a pocket universe of misery for a few weeks when I came down with a nasty virus followed by a racking cough. It stopped me from going to TekUKon, which was a blow, but every cold has a silver lining. Unable to get on with any of my new projects, I whiled away the time for the fluid link to repair itself by editing the fifth Blood Sword book, The Walls of Spyte. It's still a slapstick dungeon bash but at least the flowchart now makes sense and the pieces of the key you find are properly numbered, so for the first time ever you can actually complete the adventure.

Surprising creative experience of the year was discovering I still have a copy of the Lord of Light boardgame that Nick Henfrey (creator of Spacefarers) and I pitched to Ian Livingstone (yes, 'im again) and Steve Jackson back around 1980. We didn't have the rights, which might or might not have been a problem. Nowadays there's always Kickstarter, so who knows?

And entertainment highlight of 2018 was discovering Guy Sclanders' hilarious Fabled Lands playthroughs on YouTube. Many of the comments focus on how nasty things used to happen in games in the old days. Well, nasty things are more fun. Whatever doesn't kill you helps you level up.

And on that note, best wishes for the year ahead. See you on the other side.