[Read It/Play It Review] Mothership // The Cathedral of the Red Immortal
This series is for all the Wardens with no free time. The plan: buy a module, read it once, run it at the table, and report back here with how confused I was during this process. I'll be prioritising lesser known modules too to give them some more attention.
My Guarantee: I have always run the scenario at least once in front of real human peoples.
(Shameless plug for my own module too: Beneath Ice and Snow).
Read time: 10 minutes
TLDR: The Cathedral of the Red Immortal is a trifold gothic sci-fi scenario. It has players exploring the wreckage of a starship buried in the side of an asteroid, Thermis 724-V. Oh, and the jump drive is powered by human sacrifice and blood. But that's probably fine. Recommended!
Overview
Last Friday I got a message from a friend that their D&D game was cancelled and they needed something else to play. I told them I'd be happy to oblige, printed off a cool sounding scenario from this list of Mothership modules with vampires, read it while I stuffed my face with a hasty dinner, and then jumped in the car to go save games night. And so, like Jonathan Harker on his misjudged expedition to deepest Transylvania, my players got to spend an evening exploring the...
Cathedral of the Red Immortal is a trifold module by Canadian writer and TTRPG publisher Michael Kramer. Michael was also the co-writer/designer of the excellent Prospero's Dream supplement Grim Merchants along with his brother Joshua Kramer.
The scenario itself manages to pack a lot into the six panels: it has two maps, the excellent decoherence table to replace wounds (we'll come to this!), rules for commandeering the Cathedral, and a choice of three different plot hooks. So very generous of you, Michael! All of this wrapped up in a blood-soaked Gothic Sci-fi setting that I loved. Of course, the challenge of a trifold is the art of short, impactful OSR-style prose and making every inch count. The Cathedral does an excellent job at this and only occasionally did I have to fall back to my own Warden improvisational skills to fill in the blanks. Let's get into it.
"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." - Blaise Pascal (or Mark Twain depending on the timeline you subscribe to), advocate for OSR-style writing.
The Reading
“Octahedral containers cut from the stone of the abyss itself. Inscribed with protective, occult religious symbols-- both familiar and strange.”
Michael really makes great use of the OSR style of writing for the rooms here. There is an italicised flavourful description at the top of every room, any key items and information are in bold, and extra information is given using bullets. One especially nice touch is that if there is anything specific to a certain skill this is highlighted in the text, which made it super easy for me to get an idea of what skills I should recommend my players choose during character creation.
One of the coolest things about the Cathedral of the Red Immortal scenario is the "decoherence" mechanic. The setup for the scenario is that the Cathedral is stuck in a quantum superposition. One version is crashed on Thermis 724-V, and the other is fully functional and travelling through deep space. Throughout the scenario the players will "decohere", flipping them from one version of the ship to the other. However, what makes this especially interesting is that each time they flip, the characters' realities start to come apart at the seams. This is done by rolling on a 1d10 "decoherence wound" table, which has some great effects like characters losing their names, trinkets changing, or their skills swapping.
Unfortunately, the great decoherence table mechanic is slightly undone by the lack of clarity about how to best use the table. For example, there is a cat symbol used to tell the Warden when decoherence should occur (or at least I think that is what it is for!) but it is never clear if when players decohere do you just go to the other ship, roll on the table, or both. I went for both, but that may not be the intention. I also noticed that the characters' maximum wounds increase by +1 each time you roll on the decoherence table, making them effectively immortal (cool!). However, the costs of decoherence are not that bad, making the extra wounds almost a straight buff.
Random thought: What if the effects of the decoherence table got worse as your maximum number of wounds increased? Your character becomes immune to physical damage while always risking that they might dissolve into the ether at any moment.
Laying out a trifold is a tricky art form, and I'm certainly no expert, but I have read the wisdom of others and shall proceed to talk on the topic with unqualified confidence. The first issue I had is the introduction text. It is found on one of the inside panels, which meant that I read the description of one of the maps before really knowing what was going on. A little confusing! You should definitely aim to have the introduction text either on the front panel or on the first panel when you open it.
Another layout issue I had was related to the room descriptions for the Cathedral in its "ruined" state on Thermis 724-V (the version of the Cathedral the players first encounter). The text is bounded and squashed around a map of the ruins, which just makes it incredibly hard to find the text you need. Of course, these last two points happen in trifolds because space is at a premium and you can't afford to leave any empty areas.
That brings me to my last point on the reading: The stats for the Cathedral in its fully functional starship form. Fitting the ship description into the format of Mothership's Shipbreaker's Toolkit was nice and probably super useful for a campaign game where the players actually commandeer the Cathedral. However, for someone running the scenario as a one-shot these stats felt essentially pointless since I never needed them at all and they take up half an interior panel. Half a panel that could have been used to better explain the decoherence mechanics!
Random thought: It might be cool if the ship stats were just included as a downloadable optional extra?
The Playing
In my game I had three players: one marine, one scientist, and one android. For the assignment I used the Blankwick Investing suggestion: The players are hired to destroy the Cathedral. After a short introduction with a low level clerk, I bundled the players into the nearest starship and sent them on their way with a chain-smoking pilot called Greg.
Arriving on Thermis 724-V, I described how the remains of the Cathedral were scattered in a crater on the surface, the stark light of the distant star casting beams through the surrounding asteroid field, and the crimson facades of the altar and the crypt loomed over the wreckage. From there my players began to explore. A nice touch for this scenario is that there are three possible entrances: The Nave, which is the remains of the Cathedral's cargo bay (and is now overrun with Imps --- Imps? Yes, see later), the Refectory, which is the remains of the jump drive (and a maze of splintering steel shards), and a doorway that requires a character to give a blood sacrifice. All three are clearly laid out in the map, and made the exploration of the exterior feel very rewarding for the players as they chose an entrance. In the end, they explored the refectory but, feeling it was too dangerous, instead entered through the blood door...
The blood doors, by the way, are such a great mechanic. Throughout the Cathedral (both in the ruined and spaceship versions) there are doors, computer consoles, and (ultimately) even the jump drive that all require blood sacrifices to interact with. For most of the doors the sacrifice costs 1HP, in other places it costs 5HP, and if you want to power the ship that requires a wound and a roll on the bleeding table in the PSG! Luckily, the group's Marine was willing to make the sacrifice every time, and it made for some great tension when the Marine, low on health near the end of the scenario, was trying to escape with the Android. "I would if I could," our Android said apologetically as the Marine had to give up half his remaining health to open the last two doors. (Spoiler: they never escaped anyway, but it was dramatic!)
After boarding the Cathedral, the characters found themselves wandering through the ship's rusted, broken interior. Throughout the main corridor there are flashbangs connected to tripwires (whose origin aren't explained), which have the sole purpose of blinding the players and forcing the first decoherence. Slightly contrived, but it worked totally fine! Soon enough, the players were using the flashbangs to intentionally flip themselves between the two versions of the ship. The players really enjoyed this, and it spurred on discussions about whether they had travelled back in time, teleported to another ship, or were just dreaming... No one guessed the ship was in a quantum superposition due to the carving of occult glyphs onto the walls of ritualistic sacrifice rooms. Surprising really. The players also enjoyed the fourth-wall-breaking nature of erasing their names or changing their skills.
The only difficulty with the decoherence at the table was figuring out a consistent set of rules for when the players would decohere. The main way is to have them lose access to vision (via the flashbangs --- but these are only on the ruined Cathedral), a second is to have an electromagnetic pulse shut off all lights intermittently, and a third is when the players exit/enter the crypt/altar. Although this feels like plenty of ways to force a decoherence, I did find myself awkwardly searching for a way to flip to the other ship a few times.
Random thought: It might have been useful if the Red Immortal could also force a decoherence when he attacks?
Onboard the Cathedral, there are two main threats: the Imps (which are hilariously fired from the Cathedral's main onboard weapon, such a great idea) and the titular Red Immortal (who is almost, but not quite, a vampire). The Imps are described as mob-type creatures that cluster in the Nave, however in my game I couldn't help but picture them as the fluffy, brown cuties from classic Doom (pictured above!). So instead of just having the Imps in the Nave, I had a bunch of these bigger Doom-style Imps hiding around the rafters and vents of the ruined Cathedral (having long ago escaped from the Imp cannon). I actually really liked the Imps: they are a pretty low-level threat if the players have any guns, but as ammo and health run low in the scenario they started becoming a real threat. Especially when you consider you have to give up health just to open the bloody doors!
I had a bit more of an issue with the Red Immortal, though. He is the desiccated husk of the Cathedral’s captain, having been reincarnated multiple (thousands?) of times after sacrificing his crew to whatever evil power that er... powers the ship. Anyway, I was expecting him to be a brutal enemy that has a neat effect of being, well, immortal. Every time you kill him, he reincarnates inside the ship’s Crypt. The issue is that he is a bit of a damp squib. In my game, his stats were so low that our Marine was easily able to dispatch him with a shotgun blast to the face whenever he showed up (with the occasional additional conk to the noggin from the other characters to finish him off). Of course, like with the Imps, if the ammo had run out, the players would have been in more trouble, but since he turns up late in the scenario there just isn't enough time for him to feel particularly scary.
Definition. Damp Squib. An event that is not as exciting or popular as people thought it would be.
Which brings me to the ending. My players had hacked the Cathedral's jump drive controls and set it to overload when turned on. The ending scenes then resulted in waiting for the Red Immortal to be reincarnated, incapacitating him, throwing him on the Altar to power the jump drive (via extreme exsanguination), and then hoping that the electromagnetic pulse sent them back to the surface of Thermis 724-V before the jump drive blew. Unfortunately for two characters, the pulse never happened (thanks to an improvised coin flip!) and only one player managed to escape with Greg as the Cathedral collapsed in on its own stack of realities. It was a lot of fun. However, to add one final criticism, most of this ending was improvised at the table and it would have been good to have one or two more suggestions for how the players might succeed written in the module.
Final Random Thought: This module would make a great alternative start to a Dead Planet campaign. It was certainly in the back of my head while running this.
Conclusion
Overall, I enjoyed running the Cathedral of the Red Immortal. I loved the blood-powered doors, the jump drive powered by sacrifices, and the decoherence mechanics. The atmosphere, too, was dripping with gothic goodness. Yes, there are a few layout niggles, maybe the Red Immortal could use a bit of a buff, and perhaps just a little more guidance on how to succeed or how to use the decoherence stuff, but ultimately these are all minor issues that any good Warden can work through. Basically, I recommend giving this one-shot a go. My table had a blast killing Imps and slowly going mad in a sci-fi space Cathedral, and I reckon your table would too.
Want me to review something? Drop me an email at heylookim at gmail dot com. If I'm given a free copy, I'll say in the review.
Shoutout to supporters: I just want to say thanks to user Kickball for the Ko-fi tip on the last review! Much appreciated!