Messy Review - His Arrival Was Foretold
Rating: πββ¬πββ¬πββ¬πββ¬πββ¬
His Arrival Was Foretold is a tri-fold pamphlet adventure by Evlyn Moreau for Liminal Horror, which has a crowdfunding campaign coming soon for its deluxe edition.
I have yet to run this one, but I have loved it since it was originally released two years ago. I adore Evlynβs work and the cat meme this is based on, so I was biased going in, but it has so much more going for it than that.
The adventure centers around a teenage trans girl (Maggie) who is friends with at least some of the Investigators and has disappeared after mentioning her interest in finding the source of the βHis Arrival Was Foretoldβ meme at an an abandoned cursed housing project. It features a 13-point pointcrawl around the housing project and a 7-room dungeon in the building where Maggie disappeared. Along the way Investigators can learn more about children who have gone missing here and a game they created that seems to have brought a dangerous otherworldly force to life in the form of a black cat. They can also learn about a ritual to fix the problem, and hopefully save some missing kids along the way.
What I really love is that this is just a very well written mystery/horror adventure. There is so much given to the GM to work with to craft an interesting between the rooms themselves and the tables of random encounters, clues, and cards. The cards and the kids board game as a ritual to solve the otherworldly incursion is a particularly interesting touch. I just donβt see a way players would end up at a frustrating dead end here with all the tools provided to move things along and reveal whatβs really going on to them. Instead I just see so many interesting paths they might go down to discover the horror and how they might do something to fix it.
The otherworldly black cat as a monster both horrifying to the players and also seemingly beneficial to the person in need who summoned it is a very interesting challenge in and of itself.
Everything here is just so good.
I of course canβt review something by Evlyn without touching on the art. Here, the maps are masterful at both creating a real place I could see myself walking around while also injecting it with the appropriate amount of dark whimsy for the subject matter. The dungeon map is especially good at filling in the gaps of what can be fit into the limited text and providing the GM extra information to use when describing the rooms the players explore.
My only real critique was being a bit unclear on the intended procedure for using the random tables since this typically varies from adventure to adventure for Liminal Horror. However, Evlyn has helpfully provided a separate document with design notes and advice for the GM on how to do this, as well as additional tips on how to best run elements of the adventure and explanations of how things work, including a helpful diagram of the mechanism of bringing the dark cat entity into the world.
Player-facing maps and handouts are also included!
As a bonus, you also get a copy of Liminal High School, Evlynβs alternate character creation rules for making high schoolers as Liminal Horror Investigators.
At $3 thereβs no excuse not to get this if any of what I described sounds like your jam.