Tephrotic Nightmares
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Tephrotic Nightmares
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Learn MoreTo the North is an ocean without water.
Boats built of bone and sinew slice across the grey waves,
Mountains form islands in a sea of Ash and cinder.
hunting the strange fauna and one another.
Once a forest, a verdant proliferation of green.
Then came the Arsonist, and with her came fire.
The conflagration lasted a year and left a sea of Ash, smothering more than the forest could ever have hoped to —enough to choke the Basilisks themselves.
About:
Tephrotic Nightmares is hexcrawl adventure campaign for MÖRK BORG written by Luke Gearing and with art and design by Johan Nohr. It's edited by Jarrett Crader.
Gather your crew, set sail and embark upon the grey waves with a sharpened blade and a mouthful of ash.
Contains:
- Tephrotic Nightmares - 160 pages, hardcover, open spine binding, black ink edges
- GM-facing map of the Sea (A4 size)
- Player-facing map of the Sea (A2 size)
- Ship combat hex map (A3 size)
- Ship combat chits (punch-out cardboard chits)
Exposed spine: The Arsonist's fires burned this book, exposing its spine like a gaping, blackened wound. This enables the book to lay flat on the table.
Sear-sealed texts: Tephrotic Niightmares' page edges are soaked in black ink which has dried to form a sealing crust, requiring you to tear it open. Either page by page or by grabbing the whole thing and breaking it like you would a human spine. If you want to read this book, you have to first defeat it.
The Team:
Written by Luke Gearing
Art by Johan Nohr
Editing by Jarrett Crader
Published by Exalted Funeral in collaboration with Stockholm Kartell
Book Bundle: One A5 size, 160 page, hardcover open spine bound book, black ink edges, black and grey throughout; A2 size Player-facing hex map; A4 size GM-facing hex map, A3 Boat combat hex map, A5 size Chit sheet with 70 punch out square chits; envelope to contain maps and chit sheet. PDFs included.
I love this book so much! It’s absolutely brutal.
If Mork Borg occupies 80% of my brain, it's 99% the fault of Exalted Funeral. Tephrotic Nightmares is another scorcher of expansion, a cursed cruise into the stranger, more arid realms of the ocean. It's lightweight in style (most creatures and points of interest fit on a page) but crushingly heavy in concept and atmosphere. Who can resist the siren call of a dusty sea, it's ashen threats and the prospect of ship-to-ship combat played out with the provided fold-out map and chits? Not this hesher. Tephrotic Nightmares is essential, affordable and more fun than watching your own ship burn to the dirt-line while the Cannibal King feasts on your First Mate. From hell's heart, I hope he chokes on me.
The contents of this are top notch. The book feels like something salvaged from a burned out husk. The content is plentiful and plenty of material to make quite an interesting campaign.
They had me at boat mechanics, and honestly, that was enough of a selling point for me. While it’s not extensive, it is quite functional as it is, and working out the wind and how it affects the speed of the boat, right down to actual combat, is extensive enough to be fun without the 20+ pages of rules seen in some age-of-sail-style games.
My only real complaint is that there are no external tables, and you’ll find yourself going back and forth a lot within the book over certain pages. I suggest printing the PDF pages 67 and 19–22 because you’ll find yourself referring to those pages, mostly at the start, and somewhat even after, quite a bit.
The PDF raises some questions about the chits that come with the game. It appears that at some point, they were meant to be double-sided, as the PDF contains two sets of identical chits. However, one has the addition of a ‘wind’ tracking chit on one side, while the other would have been blank. There is no ‘wind’ chit in the print edition of the book, and the chits are single-sided.
Not a deal breaker at all, but something I thought I should note.
The game itself is well thought out, the world is detailed and sprinkled with adventure, and there are enough extras to keep you going for a long time. Overall, it provides a person with a unique experience.
Solo play, which is always my focus, can be hit or miss in some respects. However, it’s still a very playable game for a single player who doesn’t mind pulling some crew out of their pocket every so often to fill in some gaps.
Of course, I can’t help but suggest the physical hardback mostly due to the tactile experience it offers, but also because it’s an experience in itself. It feels like what I could imagine being the first person to open a long-sealed grimoire would be like. The pages snap and pop as you peel open each new page, revealing its secrets one page at a time.
The seal is very light, as if you’re opening an old book. There is some Rice Krispies-style crunchiness as you handle the pages initially. The first encounter with the book is an enjoyable tactile experience that adds some weight to its intriguing backstory.
At least for those that know the story. I didn’t, in fact, read this bit until after I had already purchased the book, and it’s not mentioned anyplace in the book or on anything that comes with it. The backstory can only be found here on Exalted Funeral, in the book’s description. It’s a bit of a shame this bit of history is set to be lost so easily; perhaps it’s a bit charming as well.
The missing spine will most certainly worry some; however, Exposed Spine Binding, more commonly known as Exposed Smythe, while uncommon, is just as durable as Case Bound styles and, as mentioned, has the benefit of lying flat.
This creates a unique sensory experience that I feel truly emulates the experience of opening a book that has gone through its own personal hell. Being an avid collector of odd books, I speak from experience. Albeit, I don’t think I’ve ever had a book that went through a fire, fantasy or not.
I really hope Tephrotic Nightmares is an example of what a book can be and influences more of these types of artistic tactile experiences in the future.
Everything about this is absolutely fantastic (book, setting, supplements, etc). The book is easily the centerpiece of my Mork Borg supplements in both look and content.