Vortext of Blood: A Night Office adventure

THE PREMISE

The Night Office recognizes that continued educational opportunities and exercises are much preferred to getting eaten in the field by tentacled monstrosities. The Vortext of Blood is a new key manipulative exercise that allows you to role-play a journey through the magico-temporal space of the Way without having your mind devoured by space jellies. 

This is a good thing. 

Using the (fate)DECK mechanic and utilizing a branching narrative structure, the Vortext of Blood taps the etheric sensitivity of tarot cards to facilitate play. Solve the riddles. Decipher the puzzles. Save humanity. It's all in a day's work for a Night Office Guide. 

The Vortext of Blood will be a zine-based project of approximately 64 pages. Though, it may run longer if audience enthusiasm warrants such an expansion. Or because, you know, the author does the thing he usually does and runs long. 

The Night Office is always looking for qualified candidates to join its talented cadre of field operatives. Individuals who are mentally and psychically attuned to the Way are in high demand. Start learning how to shift reality today with the Vortext of Blood. 

THE STATE OF PLAY

Looking into the Way is dangerous. You can see forward and backward and sideways in time and space. This is how the space jellies come at you, and every field team needs a Guide that can see into nth-dimensional space and chew gum at the same time. But practicing this sort of dimensional peeking and seeking isn't the sort of thing you can do in a group setting. That's where this series of key manipulative exercises come in handy. Explore a mentally fabricated environment with just your wits and your imagination. Flex some tarot cards along the way and see what oozes through the walls. Shatter some reality and make it back alive: that's the spirt of the thing. 

Vortext of Blood is a solo role-playing activity. It starts in the grocery store—probably the bread aisle—and it ends somewhere beyond the Escherian Staircase of Pain. Do you have the mental and psychological strength to journey across the Bog of Intestinal Distress and through the Wood of Unrelenting Woe (well past Grandma's house, if you follow those sorts of magico-temporal trails)? Can you collect all of the Deterministic Environmental Causality Keys along the way? 

Vortext of Blood is a Guide-driven story, in that you're not a Closer this time, but one of the other members of a Night Office field team. Guides are magico-temporal sensitives, and they are the ones who look into the Way—that creepy realm beyond time and space where all the awful things float in their eternal slumber. Look too far, and the future looks back at you, and now you've committed everyone to something that is likely terrible. Look behind you, and maybe you'll see the machinations and mechanics that are moving against you. It's a tricky role in the field team, and most Guides aren't well-liked because they usually stand around and say, "Yeah, I wouldn't do that." 

They're the canaries of the occult world, basically. 

THE REWARDS

Vortext of Blood is a bridge between the purely Pick Your Horrible Death model of the King in Yellow books (DOOM, MADNESS, SANITY, and EMPTY), and the solo RPG narrative structure that will be used for the Queen in Red cycle. Like all Night Office education materials, this one lets you test the waters, if you will, before you go deep-diving for R'lyeh. 

Given that shipping rates are in flux, as well as other external factors that might complicate fulfillment, we're keeping this one tight and cozy.  Two reward tiers: digital or print. 

Stretch goals will follow, but they'll likely be expansions of content and higher quality in the production. 

Get ready to slip through the veils that separate this reality from the other ones. Pray you can find your way back. 

ADD-ON

Additionally, a physical edition of the (fate)DECK used in Vortext of Blood is available as an add-on to the PRINT TIER reward. It will be a 78-card deck, styled after the tarot, though the suits will be attuned more discretely with the Key Manipulative Exercise—force, action, thought, and endurance. 

Vortext of Blood is written by Mark Teppo. He's a Pacific Northwest based author who has written more novels than he has fingers. He's also the publisher of Underland Press. His favorite Tarot card is the Moon.