Epic: Battle of Bandar Setan

The rumors from Raseir are that Laws have become more important than men, and that it has become a crime to think. Few go to that city now, and even fewer return.

 - dialogue, Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire

Never in a state

Can laws be well administered when dread

Has ceased to act, nor can an armèd host

Be rightly ruled, if no defence of fear

And awe be present.

 - Menelaos, in Sophocles's Ajax, trans. Edward Hayes Plumptre (1878)

The battle for the desert world of Lautan Lama rages on. The Legio Venefica force under Princeps Seniores Modthryth got the better of the loyalists in the initial skirmish at Bitter Tower, but Legio Crucius rallied and seized the vital fuel supplies at Depoh Minyak. As the Titans of Legio Crucius advance deeper into the streets of Bandar Setan, the traitors are waiting for them in ambush.

**

This battle will be the debut of the first new Titan I bought: a Dire Wolf Heavy Scout Titan, the Ipse revelat profunda et abscondita, et novit in tenebris constituta, or In Tenebris. This was the single resin model, not the new box of two with all kinds of fancy weapon options. I picked the one with the neutron laser; I like volcano cannons, but you can get them on anything these days, and the neutron laser promises to be weird and disproportionately useful against bigger Titans. The small size of the Dire Wolf also works perfectly with Legio Venefica's Envious trait.

The carapace weapon was easy enough to magnetize: I drilled out the hole in the hull and cut off the tab in the weapon and drilled a corresponding hole there, fit the magnets and left the piston rods supporting the weapon unglued.

The Ardex bolters fit snugly enough that they stay in place without glue, although if I'm honest, I hardly anticipate an alternative weapon option there.

This was actually a very easy assembly job for a Forge World resin model! I pretty much did the whole thing in one sitting, and then applied model railway ballast to the base.

**

My esteemed opponent showed up with a Legio Crucius Mandatum maniple and attached psi-titan, worth 1665 points:

Warlord Battle Titan Filia Gehennae; princeps seniores - 385 pts

 2 × Sunfury Plasma Annihilator - 90 pts

Paired Gatling Blasters - 30 points

Terminus Override Mechanism - 30 pts = 535 points

Warhound Scout Titan Moritelcontar - 180 pts

 Plasma Blastgun - 30 pts

 Vulcan Mega Bolter - 10 pts = 220 points [755]

Warhound Scout Titan Caput Lupi- 180 pts

 Inferno Gun - 20 pts

 Vulcan Mega Bolter - 10 pts = 210 points [965]

Warlord-Sinister Psi Titan Pater Formidinis (ʼAbu Al-hōl) - 385 pts

 Psi-titan - 300 pts

 Paired Apocalypse Missile Launchers - 15 pts = 600 points [1665]

I assembled a force to meet them. I quite like the Heavy Scout Titan rule that lets you bring a Dire Wolf as a replacement for an optional Warhound in a maniple. It means I can bring pretty much exactly the same Ferrox maniple as last time, but with the Dire Wolf as an additional Titan. For Knight support, I'm bringing three Questoris Knights and the two Cerastus lancers from the core set. Here they are:

Reaver Battle Titan Cum ergo videritis abominationem desolationis, quæ dicta est a Lorgar propheta, stantem in loco sancto, qui legit, intelligat; princeps seniores Modthryth - 250 pts

 Melta Cannon - 35 pts

 Power Fist - 20 pts

 Vulcan Mega Bolter - 10 pts

 Reinforced plating - 10 pts = 325 points

Reaver Battle Titan Deos tuos non colimus, et thronum auream, quam erexisti, non adoramus - 250 pts

 Volcano Cannon - 25 pts

 Laser Blaster - 25 pts

 Apoptygma Missile Launcher - 10 pts = 310 points [635]

Warhound Et regnum erit velut ferrum - 180 pts

 Turbo Laser Destructor - 20 pts

 Vulcan Mega Bolter - 10 pts = 210 points [845]

Warhound Regnum transiit a te - 180 pts

 Plasma Blastgun - 30 pts

 Vulcan Mega Bolter - 10 pts = 220 points [1065]

Dire Wolf Scout Titan Ipse revelat profunda et abscondita, et novit in tenebris constituta - 210 points

 Ardex Defensor Mega-Bolter - 10 pts

 Neutron Laser - 45 pts = 265 points [1330]

Cerastus Knight Banner Hircine - 130 pts

 2 × shock lance and ion gauntlet shield - 40 pts = 170 points [1500]

Questoris Knight Banner Azura - 120 pts

 3 × Questoris melee weapon - 15

 rapid fire battle cannon - 10

 2 × thermal cannon [20] = 165 points [1665]

**

We set up the terrain centered on a tall tower block.

I was quite timid in my deployment (I had slept very poorly the previous night), and concentrated on hiding from my opponent's scary Warlords. The Filia Gehennae deployed straight down the middle, and 'Abu Al-hōl on the Crucius left.

I mostly just hid behind buildings, and spent my stratagem points on sending Knight Banner Azura to Outflank. The In Tenebris deployed last due to its special rule, and I lined it up for a shot on the Filia Gehennae.

However, I failed my order rolls, and of course the neutron laser shot missed. And to make things worse, I had my shot lined up properly, but failed to realize that my Dire Wolf was wide open to 'Abu al-Hōl.

The Sinistramanus Tenebrae sang out for the first time, scoring a direct hit on the In Tenebris and nearly destroying it with one shot. The Dire Wolf quickly scuttled into cover behind a building as its servitor clades struggled to control the damage. Meanwhile, the Venefica Reavers engaged the Crucius Warlord on the left. The Cerastus Knights moved up the middle, their ion shields shunting aside enemy fire, and the outflanking Questoris Knights arrived on the left table edge.

As the Cerastus Knights got in range, the Caput Lupi opened up on them, knocking one Knight down with its Inferno Gun.

Alarmed by the Psi-Titan, the whole Venefica force shifted left, hoping to overwhelm the Crucius Warlord Filia Gehennae.

However, despite Knight Banner Azura's best efforts in getting round the Warlord, the battle was a stalemate. The Abominationem Desolationis strode forward to break the deadlock - right into the sights of 'Abu al-Hōl.

Once more, the Sinistramanus Tenebrae struck, leaving the traitor Reaver a smoking wreck. In the last moments of the battle, the In Tenebris scored a hit on a loyalist Warhound, shutting it down temporarily, but the writing was on the wall for Legio Venefica.

With one enemy Reaver knocked out, the Cerastus Knights destroyed and a Dire Wolf heavily damaged with no losses of their own, the battle of Bandar Setan is a clear victory for Legio Crucius.

**

So yeah, I lost that one. Here's the undisputed MVP of the battle, the Warlord-Sinister Psi-Titan Pater Formidinis, better known as ʼAbu Al-hōl. That left hand of darkness really is murderous, and I'm afraid I will definitely be seeing more of it.

My esteemed opponent played a very solid defensive game, and made good use of the Psi-Titan. I don't want to take anything away from that when I say that at the same time, I'm quite disappointed in myself for playing timidly and indecisively. In retrospect, I recognize that having slept very poorly the previous night played a large part in this; I felt like I was operating at the limits of my cognitive capability, like toward the end of our last Game of Thrones session. I didn't have a coherent plan and made poor decisions.

However, I learned a lot. I was quite impressed by the durability of the Cerastus Knights, and I need to use them more. I feel like I could have gotten more out of the Questoris flankers, but also that I need more thermal cannons. The Dire Wolf barely got to participate, but hey, it survived the Psi-Titan and actually managed to shut down a Titan! I like that I'm learning more all the time.

I have two principal tactical notes for myself. The first and most important of these is that if I'm going to do the small Titans and Knights things, which does appeal to me for several reasons, I need to be more consistently aggressive and plan better for taking down the Warlords and such. The other one is that this would be easier if I could ever remember the Ferox maniple bonus. But I'm also pretty sure I want a Warlord.

**

The most important takeaway from all this, though, is that Titanicus is such a fucking great game. I had a good time playing, I got a whole bunch of new ideas I want to try for next time, and I'm quite simply looking forward to more.

Rogue Trader: The Emperor's Tarot, or divination in role-playing games

Divination is criminally underused in role-playing games. To fix this problem, I'm going to talk a bit about different kinds of divination and how I think they could be incorporated into tabletop role-playing games, and then introduce my own version of the Emperor's Tarot, which we're using in my ongoing Rogue Trader campaign.

**

To most of the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East, where so much of Western cultural heritage comes from, there was no such thing as coincidence. Events in the visible world were the result of decisions and events in the invisible, supernatural world. This way of thinking combines two fundamental malfunctions of human cognition: our tendency to see agency and causation everywhere. In such cultures, if you wanted to understand what was going on in the world, and most crucially, gain any kind of insight into the future, you needed knowledge of the supernatural world. This knowledge was obtained through divination.

Most of these cultures recognized two different kinds of divination: technical and non-technical. Non-technical divination was the "divine madness" described in Plato's Phaedrus: prophecy, dreams and visions. To the Hebrews, prophecy became the only legitimate kind of divination when the casting of lots started to be frowned upon, and some of this prohibition survives to our time in Christianity. Especially in the charismatic forms of the faith, God may well send visions and prophetic dreams to believers, but ouija boards and tarot cards are considered demonic.

Techical divination, on the other hand, relied on inductive reasoning. Patterns would be found in the stars, in the fall of lots, or in the entrails of sacrificial animals, and the will of the gods would be deduced from these. To our sensibilities, this seems crazy, but in a way, technical divination is one of the forerunners of science. Some cultures, especially in the ancient Middle East, developed corps of technical diviners and elaborate institutions of divination, like astrology and haruspicy, with standardized practices and extensive documentation.

**

In the clearly magical universes of most fantasy stories and games, divination tends to be conspicuously absent. Gods are either considered withdrawn from the world altogether, or even when they aren't, their purposes and plans are so inscrutable that trying to understand them is futile. At best, most characters seem to be deists: even if they believe a god or gods have created their universe, it still essentially functions according to secular, scientific logic. In order to intervene, even gods will often need to physically manifest themselves and become directly involved. In general, fantasy worlds follow a very modern logic.

In my personal opinion, this is because none of us outside closed mental institutions actually believe in the supernatural any more. There's a wonderful Geoffrey Chaucer blog on the net with a medieval version of Snakes on a Plane, called Serpentes on a Shippe. It's a comic retelling of the movie - up to a point. What follows is technically a spoiler, so if you haven't done so already, do read the story.

In the movie, the protagonists use their various abilities to defeat the snakes. In the medieval version, they realize that mere humans can't triumph against evil on their own, and pray to God and Saint Patrick, who smite the snakes and rescue the protagonists. This is an authentic medieval ending: the point of the story is its sensus spiritualis, which teaches the reader that real power is only wielded by God. Imagine a Hollywood movie with that ending! Or, for that matter, try running a tabletop role-playing campaign where the player characters can't defeat their enemies by force or solve mysteries and puzzles by logic, but must prostrate themselves before a god and beg for divine intervention, and give thanks when they get it. Most of us would consider it a terrible campaign.

Some of this is an effect of our storytelling conventions; we like stories about exceptional individuals who triumph over adversity thanks to their personal qualities or skills. But so did our ancient and medieval forebears. The key difference is that unlike them, we don't believe the world is governed by the supernatural. (If they even did; we really know almost nothing about what ordinary people thought in the distant past.) The protagonist or player character needs to make their way through the woods by their skill in orienteering, not through divine guidance. If the climactic shootout in a western ends in God smiting the bad guy, we feel cheated of the proper resolution of the story, and it just rings profoundly false to us. We know that in real life, gods don't smite anyone. Some of us say they believe otherwise, but if you look at the way they live their lives, they follow a completely secular, worldly logic in all practical things. Our problem-solving completely rejects the supernatural.

In terms of the dual processing theory of reasoning, in formal problem-solving situations like a puzzle or mystery in a tabletop role-playing game, we use our analytical reasoning, which is highly resistant to the errors of the primary system that make us assume supernatural agency and causation. So we don't come up with supernatural solutions to practical problems.

**

This creates a unique problem when we try to role-play magical thinking. Our analytical thinking is so firmly secular that we don't even realize it. I don't know if other GMs have had dramatically different experiences, but very few of my players have ever attempted to make any real use of divination, even when explicitly provided for in the setting and system. My hypothesis is that this happens for two reasons: both our anachronistic analytical thinking, and the fact that getting an answer or solution from an outside source feels like cheating. I think that to some extent, players using divination will feel that they haven't put in the work to get the answer, so being given it directly is unsatisfying. Providing non-inductive divinatory experiences for players can, at worst, feel like a ham-handed attempt to railroad the campaign by telling them what the GM wants them to do.

In my Rogue Trader campaign, I wanted to take the fanatical religiosity of the Imperium seriously, and one of the aspects I wanted to explore was divination. This would incorporate non-technical divination like dreams and omens, but I also wanted to experiment with providing players a means of technical divination. I wanted to try two strategies that would make technical divination more interesting and satisfying to players. Firstly, have something concrete for them to use. This makes the divination into a bit more of an occasion, and hey, who doesn't like props? Secondly, tie the divination to player character skills, and leave the interpreting to the players! This should counter the notion that divination is getting something for nothing, and instead of appearing as a case of divine intervention solving problems, it should give players new information to add to their reasoning.

A rare example of a game where I thought technical divination was used intelligently was the wonderful Quest for Glory IV, which featured several Tarot readings and left me with a permanent itch to incorporate the Tarot in a tabletop role-playing game. Therefore, my campaign includes the Emperor's Tarot.

**

Luckily, the Emperor's Tarot hasn't been exhaustively described by Games Workshop anywhere, so I took considerable liberties in designing the cards. I omitted pretty much all the cards referred to in various GW works, if only because I find Games Workshop's bizarre pseudo-Latin absolutely intolerable. There are four suits of minor arcana, each named for a Segmentum: the Pacificus, Tempestus, Obscurus and Ultima. The major arcana are the Solar cards. Each suit has a corresponding element and color. My partner created the physical cards, and I think they're absolutely brilliant: they're big, solid and impressive-looking. To illustrate the first version, we chose images from a Milo Manara tarot deck we own, as well as art from Luis Royo and some miscellaneous images. There is a notion of eventually producing a physical deck of directly 40k-themed cards, but since I can't draw, this depends on the industriousness of the artist.

Below is a picture of the whole deck, as well as its first ever use in my campaign: a Tarot reading done for a character visiting a fortune-teller's shop on other business. Fans of Quest for Glory IV will recognize the spread.

I ran a role-playing session today and got to deploy our gorgeous Emperor's Tarot for the first time! Designed by me and made by my fantastic partner, meaning she did all the work and I get to gush about how awesome it looks. <3

A photo posted by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on Mar 7, 2015 at 1:11pm PST

For readings done by NPCs, I had the NPC explain each card and provide an interpretation. This was fun enough and made for some good scenes, but obviously my real goal was to get my players to use the cards themselves. In Rogue Trader, each Navigator starts with a Tarot deck, so introducing them was easy. What I did was create a small booklet explaining how to do a spread, and what meanings each particular card has. This is quite easy to do; the laziest way is to look up the standard interpretations of modern-day Tarot cards from Wikipedia! Each player competent in divining was given a copy, and told that once a session, they could use their Trade: Soothsayer or Psyniscience skill to procure a reading on a topic they requested. For each session, I would prepare a few spreads on topics I was prepared to offer information on. Remember that the cards themselves should indicate what the subject is, and this should also be an interpretative challenge! Then when a player wants to use the Tarot, you stack the deck to produce the reading you prepared and hand it to them. (bonus points for doing a fake shuffle first!)

Below is an image of the first player-initiated use of the Tarot in my campaign. My main group of players, led by the Rogue Trader himself, was investigating some strange goings-on at a penal colony. Everything seemed to be in order, but our Navigator wasn't buying it, and asked for a reading. I gave him a pre-stacked deck, and he got out his interpretation guide and laid out the spread.

A photo posted by Michael Halila (@michaelhalila) on Mar 29, 2015 at 7:16am PDT

To really make using the Tarot interesting, don't create readings that have obvious meanings. Your deck shouldn't have a card for Ork that literally only means ork, and always signifies that there are actual orks involved in what's going on. This way, your players will have to actually try to interpret the reading in light of their other information and expectations, and this can produce results you never anticipated. If players start fixating on certain interpretations of cards, this becomes a wonderful way to misdirect them.

In this particular case, one of the main cards that came up was the Demon, accompanied by the Magus and the Tomb, the last of which denotes, among other things, buried secrets. These thoroughly convinced our Navigator that there was something sinister going on, and he absolutely insisted that they must investigate further. This ended up having a strong effect on the session, eventually leading to a smuggling ring being exposed and several colony officials being shot. This reading was an answer to a fairly straightforward question, and produced a very straightforward reading, but I felt it was an excellent and very thematically appropriate addition to the session.

**

Overall, I've found incorporating the Emperor's Tarot into my campaign to be very worthwhile: not only were the cards fun to design and make, but on several occasions, I've felt they've added a whole new dimension to my players' problem-solving and, hopefully, their enjoyment as well. I would encourage anyone running a game in any kind of magical universe to incorporate some sort of divination in their campaign.

**

My notions of divination here are based on Professor Martti Nissinen's lectures on Old Testament exegetics at the University of Helsinki. A pretty good introduction is Nissinen, Martti: Prophecy and omen divination: two sides of the same coin, in Annus, Amar (ed.): Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Seminars n:o 6, Chicago, IL, 2010. Any distortions or errors are obviously my responsibility, and the application of divination to role-playing, as well as the juxtaposition of modern-day secular logic with the magical thinking of divination are my personal thoughts.