Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 17 Marrowism (Patreon)

Spoilers For:

• Marrowism

• Reference to Homicidalism

• GCE Encounter System

• Twilight Sword/Katana Mastery

Quick additional spoiler note; I would really recommend that you complete Marrowism's ranks before reading this particular article. You've been warned.

If back when the second Kickstarter launched you told me that my favourite system from the first major expansion released would involve the settlement event card Skull Eater alongside the Principle Cannibalize (Graves' younger, weaker, uglier sibling), I wouldn't have believed you. But, the Gambler's Chest Expansion (GCE) brought a new version of the card and once I drew it and saw it had a cannibalize trigger I made it my immediate business to play a follow up campaign with Cannibalize. Once I did that, my friendship with Graves was over and Cannibalize was my new best friend. Let us explore why.

Unlocking Marrowism

Like Homicidalism; Marrowism is a “secret” unlock triggered by drawing a settlement event (SE), in this case the Skull Eater SE card in combination with selection of the Cannibalize principle will result in skull eating survivor gaining the Marrowism systemic philosophy as shown here.

Now before we get a bit further into this, it is worth noting that last paragraph, if the randomly selected returning survivor who consumes the skull has Homicidalism, there is no gain of Marrowism. Likewise, on the Arc Murder SE card there is this text.

In both cases the philosophy is already added to the settlement Philosophy deck, but we don't get a quick shortcut gain of a survivor with the philosophy immediately. This can slow down the gains, but these two philosophies do not completely preclude each other.

The gain of Skull Eater also gives the survivor the Marrow Hunger impairment which as a reminder is:

Marrow Hunger: An impairment. If the Murder or Skull Eater settlement events are drawn, nominate this survivor.

First up, if Murder is drawn, a Marrow Hunger survivor can be nominated as either the killer or the victim, they're likely to be the killer when you are using Marrowism, but this does mean that if you have spare Skull Eaters around then you can spend them as the victim. An edge case benefit for sure, but one to hold in your head when we look at the rank up unlocks.

So our pathway to unlocking Marrowism is relatively straightforward; have a survivor die, select Cannibalize for our settlement Death Principle and then hope that the god of the settlement event deck is kind. Not ideal, but there is not a direct pathway to unlocking this one which I think is part of what makes it feel so special.

However, before we get into it. A quick bit about Cannibalize as your principle, when you choose cannibalize, you are losing the Graves Endeavour “refund” that helps maintain population by acting as a partial insurance against deaths. This means that Cannibalize is a more difficult Principle to navigate because it requires discipline over population numbers along with squeezing any other possible advantages out where you can manage them.

When Cannibalize is your death choice, Protect the Young becomes a very appetising Birth Principle because it offers more population gains at the cost of the stat boosts and rerolls, but also Innovations like Face Painting which offers boosts to the birth table, Pottery which can generate Love Juice and the Match Maker ability are all things that have increased value. In short, make sure you're comfortable and disciplined when it comes to keeping your population at a healthy number, I recommend 20 survivors as the bare minimum number, because it offers a good buffer against a string of bad fortune. You may be comfortable with less, but I would never sit below 16 survivors if I can avoid it (especially when you consider that the Society unlock is 15 Population and Romantic is a huge boon for Marrowism survivors).

So what is Marrowism about?

Marrowism is one of the more exciting philosophies in the GCE because it provides us with not only with another alternative development path for survivors, it also gives us additional insight into the world and the creatures that live in it. In specific, Marrowism is the path that leads us to understand the GCE's encounter creatures. The Bone Eaters. As we'll see when we walk through the ranks a bit further on, consumption of bones in the world of Kingdom Death leads a survivor on a pathway that results in both physiological and mental changes.

I am always a huge appreciator of monsters that both provide a mystery and answer said mystery in the same release. Monsters like the Gorm, Sunstalker, Dung Beetle Knight and Dragon King are amongst my favourites not just because they are mechanically engaging monsters to go up against, but also they offer a lot of details about their nature and lifecycles.

I think Marrowism's connection to the Bone Eaters is possibly even better than that, because it is all self contained within a single expansion, but it also provides the mystery of the Bone Eaters early on, before eventually unveiling the answer when you unlock and complete the philosophy. This was such a sweet moment that I enjoyed and it represents the very best “Mystery Box” journey that Team Death have ever created. This was more fun and engaging than anything else they've done in respect to monster lore so far, because the answer to “What are bone eaters?” was logical and fun. Yes, going into it I was aware that Bone Eaters came from survivors, but this pre-knowledge did not diminish the experience one iota. It is genuinely fun to have the answer be 'yes it is what you thought' from the very start. More on this later, let us get to the Philosophy Book.

Hunt XP & Neurosis

Appropriately we have the slow Hunt XP track here; while this does mean that we get less time with our precious Marrowism survivor at full ranks, I do appreciate the story this slow, long chart represents. It takes time for the metamorphosis of the survivor to complete and that is some extra
“show, don't tell” storytelling through mechanics that I appreciate.

The neurosis is a very mild one overall; the extra Lumi tax on non-Marrowism knowledges is not insignificant, but it is something that can be overcome fairly easily. The Majestic Invitation portion of this is a bit more of a concern, because that is a thematic “death” of the character (similar to Twilight Sword/Katana Mastery). However, the Bone Eaters are not around forever (only four encounters at a maximum) and even then the exact counter card needs to line up with your Marrowist. I think it is a very reasonable piece of design, though if it does happen during the encounter it becomes far more likely the remaining survivors may abandon the hunt (especially if your Marrowist was the Scout).

Why would you have a Marrowism Scout? We'll get there.

Rank 1 – Untouched Treasure

We get our almost compulsory +1 lumi and roll on the table.

The 1 result gives use a disorder, or at Collective Cognition (CC)16+ we also get +1 strength and +10 insanity. Which is appreciated, because at higher CC levels rolling just a negative is not ideal.

With a 2 to 7 result we get +1 strength and at CC11+ we also get +1 to all hit locations on our next departure. Notably this is the next time that the survivor departs, not automatically the next departure step; I appreciate things like that because it banks the bonus instead of “forcing” the given survivor to go out on the next hunt.

Finally at the 8 to 10 result the Marrowist gains +1 speed; speed is always an interesting stat to gain because it is a double edged sword, smart selection of the survivor's weapon can create benefits. Weapons which trigger bonuses on hit rolls (such as Perfect Hits) appreciate more speed for example.

Overall this is a modest and unassuming rank and one of the really notable things here is outside of the Tenet, there are no Knowledges unlocked here and thereby not a lot to comment on outside of the thematic slowness of this Philosophy is maintained here.

Rank 2 – Fading Fear

First of all, you have to consume a bone when reaching this rank, otherwise you suffer -1 strength and +1 systemic pressure (SP). That should not be too difficult to manage, but it does bring with it a general rule for Marrowism settlements, try to keep some bones in your settlement storage to cover these rank ups in case you do not get them from the hunt. Missing this bone doesn't stop us rolling on the table, but -1 strength and +1 SP are not things you want to gain.

The table gives us +1 lumi and then a roll. The 1 result has a broken rib severe injury; the broken rib is -1 permanent speed, so this result can undo the 8 to 10 result from the previous table. A kind of amusing trolling there.

2 to 7 is our second knowledge unlock <K> Stone Skin and at CC14+ we may consume a second bone to gain an additional +1 strength. 8 to 10 gives the survivor an incredible +1 luck, but requires that the next departure is 3 or fewer pieces of gear on the grid (this makes them a scout candidate for that single hunt because it is the smallest loss of gear grid slots).

Finally at CC16+ we also gain a Monser Bone basic resource; so tuck that away safe for a future rank up!

Rank 3 – The New You

Another bone needs to be consumed to avoid the punishment, we gain +1 lumi, a sweet +1 strength and roll on the table.

The 1 to 3 result gives us <K> Surgical Precision, simple result but it is our third possible Knowledge unlock to it is nice to see. Likewise 5 to 8 is another straight up knowledge unlock with <K> Perfect Physique.

At 9 or 10 we gain 1d5 Love Juice, which is a very strong get because the settlement has cannibalize as its death principle, so methods of maintaining the settlement population like Love Juice becomes very important. This is a real great get and can be combined with Face Painting to really shore up population numbers.

The CC 24 result is also kind of amazing, you erase all your survivor's disorders and can never gain a disorder again. While you do lose access to Immortal (which is not an insignificant drawback considering the next rank); I think that is a reasonable price to pay.

Rank 4 – A Monument of Yourself

Here it is, that super cool moment that I mentioned earlier; at Rank 4 you gain massive benefits. You are now locked at SP 0; you gain an extra +1 strength, you cannot wear any armor other than head armor or bone keyword armor and you are now represented by a Bone Eater miniature on the board. Quick note here; I am very disappointed that we did not get 7 Bone Eater miniatures in the box, there is the Bone Eater narrative sculpt to cover for a male Bone Eater, but we have no female one. (Also my Bone Eater narrative sculpt was miscast and I have STILL not received a replacement).

This is without a doubt one of the coolest things I experienced when playing the GCE; it was so thematic and sweet to experience this and I am excited for when it happens to people I play with (we're still waiting the GCE to appear on the KDSimulator). This is the kind of stuff that for me is peak KDM; cool moments hidden away in a book that is itself part of content that you may not encounter for quite a while. This moment is why I stuck that spoiler warning at the top of this article, I don't want to spoil this for people who haven't experienced it themselves (unless they choose to ignore the spoiler, it's your choice). I loved this so much.

The table gives us the classic +1 lumi and a roll:

A 1 result is a gain of +2 movement; movement is the single strongest stat in KDM, because the higher your movement is, the more options you have on your turn and the more easily you can outdistance monsters with a Dash-Cancel (Dashing during the flow step after the monster targets you, thereby cancelling the monster's AI card and denying it a turn of damage). 7 Movement is absolutely something to celebrate and a worthy Rank 4 boost (even if it is less exciting than Knowledges).

With the roll of a 2 to 8 we gain <K> Marrow Monarch, our final Knowledge unlock; and with CC11 the roll results of 5 to 8 give us the ability to bestow Marrow Hunger onto some survivors. Now Marrow Hunger does not automatically unlock Marrowism; so the best choices here are some useless survivors that you have no desire to take out on hunts. That way you can trade them in as victims if you draw Murder; it's not a great CC unlock, but it does have a little utility.

Finally with a roll of a 9 or 10 we gain the ability to ignore Slow, Cumbersome and Two-Handed. This means we can leverage any potential speed gains we got earlier on with slow weapons; it also means that we can combine Blood Paint with two-handed weapons as well. This is an incredible suite of options and if you get an Ageless Marrowist survivor (thereby ignoring the effective retirement that is coming after the next 1 or 2 hunts), there is a lot of fun to be had with builds.

This final rank is so much fun that I am always aiming to get Ageless onto Marrowists (Romantic Principle increases the odds); because then I can spend more showdowns with this unique survivor type. Combining two grand/spear weapons (or a weapon + shield) on a survivor is something you don't usually get to do in this game and it is a real joy to experience.

Summary

As I wrote above, Marrowism has become my absolute favourite Philosophy and got me to switch up my principle choices in a delicious manner. This is not the most powerful of the options Arc Survivors can have, but between the thematics, the lore, the knowledges and that Rank 4 miniature switch I simply cannot put anything else above it in my personal rankings. Running Arc Survivor campaigns with Cannibalize and Romantic (sometimes with Protect the Young) has become a delightful experience. There are a couple of duff spots on the Rank Tables (such as the gaining of Marrow Eater without the Marrowism Philosophy at Rank 4) but none of those are dealbreakers for myself.

In fact, the only real sad point I experience when playing with Marrowism survivors is that bitter sweet “only 2 XP till retirement” moment that happens when you reach Rank 4 and unlock BEEG FORM. It is a big part of the reason why I pair Cannibalize and Romantic (increased odds of Ageless White Secret) because those BIG BOYS and GIANT GIRLS bring joy to the table for me, not just with their unique table presence, but also sometimes they are dual wielding absolutely bonkers weapon combinations. It is such a great demonstration of how miniatures can enhance a gaming experience.

All hail the BEEG Survivors, may they reign forever.